


Something More

by solafiamma



Category: Popslash
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-20
Updated: 2004-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 22:10:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solafiamma/pseuds/solafiamma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Disclaimer: Not a word of truth to be found here. It’s fiction, dude.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Something More

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Not a word of truth to be found here. It’s fiction, dude.

Chris gets to the diner early, but Joey’s already there, drinking coffee, deep in conversation with the waitress. He looks good, Chris thinks, relaxed and happy.

The diner is pretty downscale, torn red leather booths that look like they haven’t been upholstered since the late fifties, white and black tiled floor that apparently hasn’t been mopped since then either. Joey’s promised that the food more than makes up for the decor though, and since Chris has been on the road since seven o’clock in the morning to make it here by noon with nothing but a box of Ritz crackers for sustenance, he’s prepared to give it a shot.

Joey leaps out of his seat when he sees him and folds Chris into one of his enthusiastic bear hugs, almost smothering him in his armpit in the process. It feels ridiculously good. This casual grabbing and hugging and random touching is one of the things Chris has missed most during the hiatus. He’s enjoying the break, he really is, and he’s totally not ready for it to end any time soon, but the glaring absence of the other guys in his day to day life is a constant niggling blip on his happiness radar. If they weren’t spread halfway across the country, if they didn’t present a constantly shifting target, if they’d all just stayed in Orlando, it might be easier.

“Man, it’s so good to see you. I fucking miss you guys,” Joey says, echoing his thoughts.

“Me too, dude. I’m starting to get whiplash driving all over the country just to check up on you bozos.” He lets Joey nudges him into the booth, nodding frantically at the waitress when she offers him a coffee. “At least you’re all still on the same planet. I’d be totally screwed if they’d actually sent Lance to the moon or wherever.”

“Oh, hey, speaking of Lance, he’s going to join us. He said he might be a few minutes late, but he’s on his way.”

“ _Lance_ is in New York?”

“Well, he’d kind of have to be, wouldn’t he?”

“What the fuck is Lance doing here? I thought he was in Orlando. Shit.” He slouches further down in his seat, trying to look like he doesn’t want to hit Joey. This is suddenly way less fun than it was a few minutes ago.

“What? You guys fighting, or something?”

“No. I don’t know. No. Well, _I’m_ not. So, no.”

Joey just raises an eyebrow at him and waits.

“I just. He’s being an ass lately.”

“Lance?” Joey looks shocked, like Chris has just told him that Lance is planning to assassinate the pope.

“See, I knew you’d take his side. Fuck, man.”

“I’m not taking his side, asshole. I’m not taking anyone’s side. I don’t even know what the sides look like.”

Chris glares at the formica table top for a few seconds, long enough to register that the salt and pepper shakers don’t match and that there’s a syrup smear near the napkin dispenser. He just knows he’s going to be sticking his elbow or palm into that before the meal is finished.

“I don’t know, man. He’s just being a dick.” Chris can’t really put his finger on it, but things have changed since Lance got back from Russia. Lance has changed. And it sucks because Chris had really been looking forward to having him home, to having all of his guys in the same country at least, even if they couldn’t be in the same state. Then Lance comes back, absurdly optimistic about making the April shuttle, which in his very secret heart of hearts Chris guiltily hopes will never happen, and it’s like he’s a different person, as though his absence has shaped and polished him into something bright and sharp and disconcertingly unfamiliar.

“Ever since Russia, he’s just. He’s not the same. I think he’s mad at me about something, but he won’t say anything. I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”

Joey thinks for a couple of minutes and shakes his head. “You guys seemed fine at Justin’s. That was, what? Just a couple of weeks ago? You mean after that? Something happened after that?

“No, no,” Chris smacks his knife and fork together testily. “He was being weird as shit that night. You didn’t notice? Fuck, you have to stop drinking so much, Joe, you’re getting stupid with it.”

Joey laughs. “I’m not the one who ended up puking all over Justin’s feet in the driveway, man.”

“Fuck you. I had to drink. I was so tense after two hours in Lance’s company I thought I was going to pop.”

“So what was he doing?”

“Nothing. He just. Fuck, you must have noticed! He just kind of, I don’t know, he comes in and sucks up all the energy in the room. He’s like, whoosh! This great Lance vortex that just drags you in and won’t let go. And he makes everything tense, and he won’t even let me tickle him anymore and half the time he doesn’t laugh at my jokes.”

“Well, dude, some of your jokes really suck.”

“Bastard. Look, I can’t describe it. It’s just, ever since Russia, you know? He’s just all intense and annoying and it’s starting to get on my nerves.”

“I really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. He’s just fine around me.”

“I think he hates me.”

“Yeah, well, that’s stupid. Have you asked him what’s going on?”

“Of course I’ve fucking asked him. I’m not a total moron. Give me _some_ credit.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“So what did he _say_ , Chris?”

“He didn’t say anything. He. Um. I was kind of holding him upside down and shaking him at the time and he was pretty pissed. He might not have heard me even. I would have asked again, but he stopped talking to me. He almost put my back out too, so I don’t know where he gets off being so pissy,”

“God, you’re an ass. But, you know? Shut up now. He’s here.”

And Joey is waving over Chris’ shoulder, a big easy wave, big easy smile, the smile he saves just for Lance. Chris smothers a quick unworthy flare of annoyance at Joey for dragging out that particular smile right now. After all, he’s just been telling Joey how shitty Lance is being, and okay, so Joey obviously isn’t taking the whole thing very seriously and probably thinks Chris is being paranoid and petty, and even if he does believe him, he’s going to take Lance’s side anyways because he always does, and that’s cool, but the least he could do is look a little disapproving or stern or something. Whatever.

Chris twists his face into what he hopes is a welcoming expression as he turns around. Lance is already at the table, smiling comfortably at Joey, but looking a little tense when he nods at Chris.

Chris thinks, well fuck, here we go, but he grins at Lance and then, before he can stop himself, grabs his arm, tugs him into the booth and wraps him in a headlock, holding him still for a somewhat forceful noogie.

“So, Bass! You finally dragged your ass in here! And hey! Coincidence! We were just talking about your ass! Or was it about what an ass you are? Something about your ass, anyway. Check with Joey. He’s better with details.”

Lance stops squirming and for a second Chris thinks maybe everything’s going to be okay this time, and he thinks maybe Lance is actually even smiling, but he can’t really tell because he still has Lance in a headlock and can’t see his face. At least he isn’t telling him to fuck off. But the next second, Chris’ breath rushes out of him in an urgent whoosh as the heel of Lance’s hand connects solidly and viciously with his solar plexus, and then Lance is up and away and sliding in beside Joey, rubbing his head and looking pissed.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Chris yells. Or tries to. The words come out in a pathetic, wheezy gust and he isn’t even sure that he achieved any actual, discernible words. He tries again and this time he’s pretty sure Lance can hear him, even though the volume could use some adjustment. “What the fuck, you dickhead! That fucking _hurt_! What’s your problem?”

Lance glares at him, a mean green glare with an edge of disdain that makes Chris want to upend the bowl of sugar into Lance’s coffee, but Lance doesn’t have a coffee yet so he just shakes the bowl menacingly, sending a scattering of sugar granules in Lance’s general direction.

“Oh, fuck off, Chris.” Lance sounds a little tired and grumpy. He’s probably no more thrilled about having to share Joey than Chris is. “Just leave my hair alone.” He pokes at his hair with his fingers, nudging it back into shape and Chris has to struggle to stop himself from reaching across the table and mussing it again.

Lance smiles up at the waitress who’s arrived with the coffee pot, and it’s a night and day moment, Lance’s face flicking from cranky to sweet in an instant, and Chris feels a great surge of irritation because he used to know how to flip that switch. Well, maybe he hadn’t known exactly _how_ , because he’d never really thought about it much before now, but he’s pretty sure he used to be the cause of the transformation, even if he hadn’t really known what he was doing. Joey can still draw those smiles out of him; Chris seems to have lost the knack.

Lance orders a coffee and a burger and goes into a song and dance about what kind of cheese do they put on the burgers and would it be possible to substitute real cheddar for the processed, and red onions for the regular onions and can he have the relish on the side and no pickle. When the waitress turns to him, Chris says “I’ll have what he’s having but just normal. None of that stupid shit.”

Joey scowls at him but Lance is busy with his coffee and doesn’t even seem to have heard. Figures. Joey orders a Reuben and when the waitress leaves, nods towards Lance and raises his eyebrows at Chris. Pretending not to notice, Chris adds more sugar to his coffee and stirs it noisily and messily. When he looks up again, Joey nods in Lance’s direction again and mouths, “Ask him.”

“What the fuck’s wrong, Joe? Got a tic, there? Knock it off, you’re making me dizzy.”

“Fuck off.”

Lance looks from Joey to Chris. “Am I missing something? Did I interrupt something?”

“Just Joey doing his Tourette’s impression. Totally insensitive and he sucks at it anyway, so you didn’t miss much. Did you change hair goo?” he adds to change the subject. “Just, your hair feels, uh, softer.”

Lance looks at him suspiciously for a moment. “Probably.”

Joey’s looking at him and trying not to laugh, which doesn’t do much to improve his mood.

“Good, good. Great. So, Joe. How’s the kid?”

This is a much more profitable deflection, and Joey keeps them entertained with the latest anecdotes and photographs until the waitress returns with their food. As she’s putting the plates on the table, slamming Chris’ in front of him with what he considers excessive force, Lance’s cell rings. “Oh, sorry, guys. I’ve got to take this. Excuse me. I’ll just be a sec.”

“Hurry back,” Chris says, and he reaches out and gives Lance’s ass a sharp pinch as he passes, and grins in satisfaction when Lance squeaks loudly into the phone.

He looks back at Joey. ‘You see? You see what I mean? He’s just weird. I don’t think it’s even Lance. I think they swapped him at Star City for some death robot and now they’re going to invite us to Russia to perform and they’ll fill the stadium with Chechen rebels and then detonate him. I think we should kick him out of the band. Just to be safe.”

“Yeah, sure, good theory, because I’m sure those Chechen rebels are just dying to see us in concert. And, um. Actually, I didn’t notice him doing anything weird. You’re being kind of a jerk, though.”

“Bite me. _You’re_ being a jerk. What the fuck was all that twitching about? Like I really want to sit down and have a heart to heart with Lance with you for an audience.”

“Whatever. Can we at least try to get through lunch without you getting me barred from this place? I like it here.”

“And I thought you were just trying to give me food poisoning.” Chris nudges his burger and peers under the bun warily.

“The food’s great. Just try it. Best burgers in New York, man.”

Chris takes a bite and smiles. “Mmph. No shit. That’s fucking awesome. Just needs a few red onions.” He reaches over, flips the bun off the top of Lance’s burger and grabs the red onions. “Don’t tell,” he warns Joey, cramming the onions into his own burger just as Lance gets back to the table.

They both watch Lance take a first and then a second bite, but if he’s noticed anything amiss he’s not saying anything.

“So,” Lance says, “I talked to JC last night. He’s kind of pissed with you, Chris. What did you do to him?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“Uh uh. He just said you guys went out to a club and you were a jerk and he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Fuckhead. That guy. I don’t know how he made it through puberty. He has no survival instincts whatsoever.”

“So what happened?”

“Oh, just. JC called me up and asked if I wanted to go clubbing with him, he’d heard about this funky place just outside LA where the house band was really awesome, played some kind of punk jazz hip hop fusion with a touch of Bauhaus around the edges or some such thing, and I wasn’t doing anything so why not, right? Well, C got the wrong address or something or maybe he’s just got a death wish, I dunno, but anyway we cabbed to this place, and from the outside it didn’t look like much, just a neon sign and windows painted black. Looked kind of grubby, but whatever, we walked in and whoa! Turned out to be a biker bar, wall to wall leather and denim, tattoos, hairy chests, hairy bellies hanging over belts, and some band that sounded like a cross between Lynnard Skynnard and the Hitler Youth marching band. You know, not really my scene but it could have been okay except, no, JC was dressed for the other place, the punk-hip-hop-goth-jazz whatever the fuck kind of place you wear black eyeliner and vinyl and lace and jeans with the ass half shredded off. He wouldn’t pay any attention to me when I tried to tell him that staying might not be such a great plan, and when I tried to drag him out he just pushed me off and sashayed his fuckin’ Chasez ass on up to the bar until he was about three deep in ’roided-out neo Nazi psychos, and started yelling at the bartender to bring him a Heineken.”

Chris pauses to take another sip of his coffee. Joey is laughing and even Lance is starting to smile, so he downs half the cup in one swallow and continues.

“Anyway, so there I was trying to push my way through all these psychos to get to him before he got himself killed, and he was just oblivious as fuck. Even when the bartender practically threw the beer at him he just nodded his polite little nod, tossed him a twenty and leaned back against the bar twitching his hips to the music like he’s looking to get fucked, you know how he does. And then this big dude - and I mean fucking humungous, this guy had to weigh close to three hundred pounds buck naked, which, you know, thank god he wasn’t. This mother was mean and ugly and dangerous, bald as a cue ball, tattoos all over his skull and his arms and every visible piece of skin, and chains spilling out of every pocket, hanging off him every which way. Anyway, he went up to JC and yelled over the music, ‘Hey, faggot, you might want to leave while you have the chance.’

“And you know, he yelled this loud enough that I could hear him and I was like two barstools away but maybe JC was closer to the speakers or something or maybe he’s going deaf or maybe, and I’m leaning toward this latter theory, he’s just a fucking dickwad, but he smiled his sexy little smile at the guy and yells back ‘Dance? Oh, not right now, thanks. Maybe when I finish my beer.’ And he waved his Heineken under the guy’s nose and closed his eyes and kept wiggling to the music with that same stupid ass smile on his face. The bald dude was just standing with his eyes bugging out and his face turning purple, and I could actually see the muscles in his arms bunching up, getting ready to bury that smile under a metric ton of fist. I could also see all his good buddies shifting around, getting into position to lend whatever assistance might be necessary, and I just kept thinking, “Fuck. How’re we going to replace JC?”

He shakes his head and starts stuffing fries and pickles and coleslaw into the second half of his burger.

Joey finally says, “So, what happened, man?”

“Huh? Oh, right. C. Well, I hit him.”

“Who? The Nazi?” Joey sounds impressed, if slightly incredulous.

“No. C. I decked him. I leapt across these two other biker dudes and whacked the silly fucker in the head. _What_?” he adds defensively as Joey and Lance, mouths full, make big eyes of horror at him. “I had no choice. It was hit him or watch him get dismembered right in front of me so I gave him a good thump upside the head and he was so surprised - because, fuck, he really is a clueless bastard - anyway he was so surprised he just went down like a sack of potatoes, just squealed and dropped. And I wasn’t taking any chances, I sat on him while I explained to the motherfucking Nazis about how he’s my cousin from Canada - from the _French_ part of Canada - and a total pussy, but my mom is expecting me to look out for him because he’s her sister’s only kid and so, yeah. These guys may be Nazi psycho freaks, but apparently they’re all about the mom love. So they bought me a beer - _not_ a Heineken - and I drank it sitting on JC and slapping him every time he tried to shove me off or open his mouth. Finally, one of the guys helped me yank him out into the parking lot and I dragged him into the first cab that came along and took his sorry ass home. Good times.”

“Fuck,” says Lance, “that could have been bad, Chris.”

“That’s a real talent for stating the obvious you have there, Bass. _Hello_?” Chris waggles a fry under Lance’s nose. “It _was_ bad, dude. I just told you.”

Lance takes a bite out of the fry, almost taking the end off Chris’ finger in the process. “No, but really,” he continues. “He could have been hurt. Both of you. It’s just. You don’t. You didn’t. Uh, what was the name of the bar?”

“Why? You planning on checking it out? Maybe dropping by next time you’re in LA and giving them a piece of your mind? I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think you’re going to fit in much better than C.” He eyes Lance across the table. Lance is, as usual, looking kind of fresh and clean and oddly pretty, and Chris knows that maybe that isn’t quite the right way to be thinking about him, knows enough anyway not to say it aloud.

“Fuck you. It’s not like I’d go in dressed like C, for Pete’s sake.”

“It wouldn’t matter what you wore, Bass, you’re always going to be too pretty for a place like that.” Oops.

”Oh, fuck you for real, Kirkpatrick. I’ve been in tougher places than that and made it out in one piece.”

“Oh, right, yeah, sure. So you what, like, get yourself all dragged up and pose as some kind of biker chick in your spare time?”

Joey throws a wadded up napkin at him. “Jesus, Chris, shut up, already.”

“You’re an ass. You’re a complete fucking ass, you know that?” Lance must be truly pissed, cursing three times in the last minute and a half. “I wasn’t planning on going there anyway. I just asked what the damned bar was called.”

“I don’t remember. Oh, wait, yeah. It was the Hogs and Knockers Bar and Grill.”

Joey’s laughing again, shaking his head and wiping mustard off his fingers. “Oh, it was not. You’re so full of shit, man.”

“No, for real. That’s what it was called. I think I even have a book of matches or something.” Chris starts digging around in his jacket pockets, but catches Lance staring at him like maybe he’s just grown a gerbil on his eyebrow or something. “What? What?”

“I can’t believe you. So ‘Hogs and Knockers’ sounds like the name of a hip-hop jazz punk or whatever the heck kind of bar to you? I just. Why would you let him in go into a place like that, Chris?”

“I didn’t _let_ him, I told you. Dude has a mind of his own, for all the good it does him. He’d walked in the door before I knew it and he just didn’t pay any attention to me after that. And what the fuck? You’re trying to make this my fault? I’d like to see you try stopping him from doing something when he’s got his mind made up. He’s like, he’s like, I don’t know, it’s like taking my sisters shopping. You just can’t say no to them.”

Lance looks skeptical. “ _You_ can’t say no. _I_ don’t have a problem saying no. I’ve said no to C a billion times.”

“That’s because you’re a bitch. A mean old cross-dressing biker’s bitch.” Chris leers at him. “Bet your ass looks awfully fetching in that tight black leather miniskirt, though.”

“Fuck off.”

Lance’s cheeks have turned pink, which Chris finds pretty satisfying, and it’s also a rather good look for Lance, which Chris finds pretty confusing. “Oh, don’t be so modest, Bass. I’m sure all your biker boyfriends think so. Hey, if I was a biker, I’d be first in line to bend you over my hog and have my beer bellied way with you.”

Lance chokes on his coffee, turning his cheeks even pinker, and Joey yells “Shut up! Jesus Christ, Chris, knock it off!” As people at neighbouring tables start peering over to see what’s going on, Joey lowers his voice and says, “Let’s just save the rest of this conversation for somewhere more private, shall we?”

“Let’s. Just. Not.” Lance glares at Chris, flushes again, and looks away. “Look, I’m. Joey, I’ve got some things I need to do, so I think I’ll just.” Lance throws some cash on the table and slides out of the booth. “I’ll just see you later.” He tries to edge out of the way as he sees Chris moving toward him, but he’s not quite fast enough and Chris snakes an arm around his waist and hauls him back into the booth.

“Hey, don’t be like that, I’m just kidding around. Stay. Have another coffee. Have some pie. Have some of Joe’s fries.” He reaches over with his free hand and snags a handful of fries off Joey’s plate and holds them up to Lance’s mouth. Lance pushes them away, but he’s smiling, and he’s not trying to escape.

Joey puts his arms protectively around his food. “Keep your hands off my plate, Kirkpatrick, or I’ll be forced to remove important parts of your anatomy. And yeah, stay, Lance. I’ll gag him if I have to.”

“I really do have to go.” He starts to pull on Chris’ arm which, Chris notes in vague surprise, is still curled around Lance’s waist, hand inexplicably stroking Lance’s ribs. Chris lets him go, but not before giving him a raspberry on the side of his neck and ruffling his hair.

“Oh, gross! Get those greasy fingers out of my hair, you shithead!”

Chris is just happy Lance is fixated on the greasy fingers instead of the whole rib stroking thing. And what the hell was that about anyway? He says goodbye and gives Lance a slap on the ass as he walks away, and turns back to see Joey looking at him thoughtfully.

“What? You thinking about dessert? Because I could definitely go for some dessert.”

“No. I mean, yeah, sure, dessert, fine. But, dude, I think you’ve got a problem.” Joey’s gazing at him with something that looks unpleasantly like pity.

“What problem? Oh. You mean Lance. You finally noticed, huh? Yeah, well, I told you, man. He’s just like all, I don’t know, _weird_ around me these days.” Chris notices the waitress taking an order a couple of tables down and starts waving his cup in the air and pointing at it. She doesn’t see him or, he suspects, ignores him, and walks back toward the kitchen.

“Not Lance, dude. _You_. You’re the one who’s being all weird.” Joey turns around and smiles, and the waitress comes running up with the coffee. While Joey flirts and chats about pie, trying to take an unobtrusive peek into the vee of her crisp white blouse when she bends to pour more coffee into their cups, Chris throws a couple of spoonfuls of sugar onto the remains of his burger and stirs it around with his fork. The waitress disappears in a clatter of plates and huffiness and Chris wonders briefly whether she’s annoyed enough to spit on the pie. Well, on his pie. He’s pretty sure that the worst she’s likely to do to Joey’s pie is spray her phone number on it in whipped cream.

He kicks Joey under the table to get his attention. “So what are you talking about? I’m being weird? Weird how?”

“I just mean. Well, Lance isn’t any different than usual. He’s just. Lance. Normal Lance.”

“Well, for starters, there’s no such thing as ‘normal Lance’ as you well know. That boy hasn’t been normal since he sprung all frog-eyed from his mama’s loins. I swear to god, he was born with a palm pilot in his right hand, a sack of miscellaneous styling products in his left and a big fat layer of smug all over his cute little ass.”

“Yeah, you see. That’s kind of what I’m talking about right there, Chris. This thing with his ass.”

“His ass? You’re talking about his ass and you’re calling _me_ weird? Pot and kettle, dude.”

“No. I mean, no. Look. I wasn’t talking about his ass. I wasn’t even thinking about his ass, because, like, I never actually do. You, on the other hand, seem to be spending a whole lot of time thinking about his ass. And how “pretty” he is. And how he’d look like in a skirt. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit … strange? Even for you?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, that’s asinine. I was just fucking with him, man, you should know that. I always fuck with him. We all do. It’s fun.”

“Yeah, but, I don’t think so, Chris. I mean, I know you’re always ready to score cheap shots off of him - “

“Hey!”

“- but this is different. For one thing, this fixation with his ass is new. You’re talking about it, you’re grabbing it, you’re pinching it, you’re slapping it. What is _up_ with that, man?”

“What do you mean? Nothing’s up. What are you saying?”

Joey’s looking at him, sipping his coffee and just _looking_ and waiting, like he’s just told a joke and Chris is being particularly slow to get the punch line. “ _What?_ Come on, Joe, what are you saying here?”

“I’m _saying_ I think you want to get with him.”

“ _Get_ with him? Get with _Lance_? With _Lance_? _Me?_ Are you out of your fucking mind?”

The waitress arrives with the pie and coffee before Joey can answer, but whatever, there can really only be one answer to that question. Either Joey is out of his mind or he’s doing some serious drugs.

On one level, Chris is genuinely shocked that Joey has managed to twist a couple of ass grabs and an admittedly poor joke about doing Lance over a Harley into a, what, a _crush_? An infatuation? What had Joey called it? A fixation. A fixation with Lance’s ass.

On another level, Chris’ brain is helpfully sifting through the evidence, for and against, and coming up with some interesting, if not particularly conclusive, results. The ass patting and slapping thing, well, he’s always done that, always horsed around with all the guys. There’s nothing new there, whatever Joey says. So, maybe he’s been a bit more _fixated_ than usual today, but, hey, it’s not like he counts how many times he comes into contact with any of their asses on a given day. Law of averages, sooner or later he was bound to take it over the line.

But what about the memory of Lance that still lingers on Chris’ palm and fingertips, the warmth of ribs under the thin cotton shirt, the firm muscles of his ass beneath the layer of denim, the solid weight of him pressed against Chris’ side, all etched into sense memory so exactly that Chris can still feel the sudden shift of cloth against skin as Lance starts to laugh, can still smell the complicated blend of shampoo and hair mousse and coffee breath that floats around Lance’s head, can still feel the curve of Lance’s butt against his hand.

Joey’s not saying anything, just doing that looking wise and sipping coffee thing again, and it’s starting to get on Chris’ nerves. If the fucker is going to say stupid shit like that, the least he can do is stay in the conversation, because this is one conversation Chris would rather not be having at all, but if he is going to have it, he’s damned well not going to have it by himself.

“Fuck you. You’re an idiot. I have no interest whatsoever in getting with Lance. I’d rather fuck a cat.”

Joey just raises his eyebrows and swallows another mouthful of coffee.

“Okay, maybe not a cat. Because, ow. But you know my rules, Joe. I don’t fuck with the band, I don’t fuck the band, I don’t do anything to fuck the band up. I’ve said from day one that we can’t be doing that shit with one another because it just won’t work. We all agreed on that rule and in all these years, I’ve never broken it and I’ve never wanted to. I just don’t look at you guys that way. You’re my brothers, man. My _brothers_.”

Joey smirks at him. “Okay. Let me re-phrase. Dude. I think you want to get with one of your brothers.”

Chris throws a spoon at him, followed in rapid succession by the remaining the lid for the ketchup bottle, the salt shaker and the napkin dispenser. Joey just laughs and waves his arms about, fending off the missiles like Wonder Woman with a beard.

“Knock if off, you’re going to get us kicked out. Look, I’m sorry. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m just saying. Think about it, Chris. And you know something? That rule was good when the whole group thing was really new and nobody really knew anyone well enough to know what would happen if we started getting between the sheets with one another, but come on. We’re past that shit now. We’ve gone through all kinds of stuff and we haven’t fallen apart. Fuck, if we can make it through the Justin and Britney drama of the century without ripping each other’s throats out, I think we can handle you boning Lance.”

“Fuck. Shut _up_! Shut up shut up shut up! I don’t want to bone Lance! I don’t want to bone Justin or JC and I sure as hell don’t want to bone you!” He pointedly ignores Joey’s elaborate mime of relief. “I don’t want to bone anyone who’s ever had anything to do with the band. I just want to go back the hotel and wash my ears out. And then I want to come over to your place and wash your mouth out. Jesus. And you’re paying for lunch because, shit, you’re just, you’re just an asshole and you’ve given me indigestion.”

“Yeah, fine, whatever. Forget I mentioned it. Can I have your pie if you’re not going to eat it?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It shouldn’t bother him as much as it does. Joey’s obviously an asshole and it’s clear that hanging around in New York with a bunch of actors and make-up people and maybe even art critics and what not is clouding his judgment, making him look at everything through gay coloured glasses or something.

Chris tells himself this, and he knows it’s true. And yet. The conversation just keeps coming back to him. He’ll be out on the golf course, lining up his shot, and he’ll hear Joey’s voice saying, “I think you want to get with Lance” and then he’ll start thinking about Lance and trying to rationalize the embarrassingly unbrotherly swelling in his shorts that thinking about Lance seems to inspire and, well, frankly his game could really do without that kind of distraction. .

It’s not like he’s never been with guys before, because of course he has, plenty of times. Guys are what he does in between women, when he’s horny but doesn’t want to commit to two or three hours of wining and dining and pretending to be interested in conversation first. Guys are filler. And it’s cool, because by and large, guys are fine with that kind of thing, or at least he’s pretty good at screening out the ones who aren’t. But he’s found that kind of sex works best when you don’t know the other guy, or you’ve just kind of met him in passing and wouldn’t, in the normal course of events, ever be likely to have occasion to talk to him again. It doesn’t hurt if he lives in a completely different state, either.

Thing is, other than being male, Lance doesn’t fit any of his criteria for guy sex. He’d be in the automatic reject pile by default even if the band didn’t have a rule about screwing one another. Which they do. Even if Chris was interested. Which he isn’t.

The whole thing is just really stupid and Joey in particular is really stupid and on crack besides. So that’s all right then, and everything should be good, except Joey’s voice won’t get the fuck out of his head.

He decides to call Lance, maybe get together for dinner or a night on the town, and put this whole thing to rest. A few hours in Lance’s company is bound to shut the voice up and put things back to normal.

When he gets Lance’s answering machine, he says, “Hey, it’s Chris,” and he’s about to say “Call me” when it suddenly hits him that the odds of Joey having called Lance to fill him in on Chris’ theoretical fixation on Lance’s ass are astronomically high. Those two are so tight that neither of them farts without clearing it with the other first. An invitation from Chris right now, however innocent, is just going to seem like a confirmation of Joey’s suspicions and if Lance goes out with him anyway it’s going to be all weird and shit because Lance will be tense, waiting for Chris to make a move so he can shut him down, and everything will just be horribly awkward and Chris is getting a headache just thinking about it, so no.

He just says, “hey” again and adds “No need to call back, I was just looking for my, uh, thing. My, um, thing that I lost. But I just remembered where I left it, so. Yeah. See ya.”

He calls Justin instead. In fact he doesn’t know why he didn’t call him in the first place, because he knows Chris maybe better than anyone and certainly well enough to be able to confirm that Joey should yank his head out of his ass.

Justin doesn’t answer either, and Chris is routed to voice mail again. He hangs up and re-dials and after five minutes of this, Justin finally picks up. It’s a routine they have.

“What the _fuck_! Chris, you asshole, what do you _want_?”

Okay, it’s more a routine Chris has, but whatever.

“You busy?”

“Yes, I’m fucking busy. If I wasn’t busy, I would have answered the fucking phone. Fuck man, we’ve talked about this!”

“Well, it was more of a you talked and I tried hard to ignore you situation, as I recall. And hey, J, get that potty mouth under control. You’ll never meet a nice girl if you can’t--“

“What do you want Chris? Look, I’ll call you back, okay?”

“No, dude, wait. This’ll just take a sec, I swear.”

“Chriiis,” Justin whines, “Please. I’ll call you in, like, an hour. A couple of hours.”

“Sorry, kid. It can’t wait. And your idea of a couple of hours fits most people’s definition of a week and a half.”

Justin gives a long suffering, put-upon sigh and says, “Fine. Fine. But.” There’s a pause followed by some muted mutterings in the background. “Just make it fast, okay? I mean _really_ fast, like tell me in less than two minutes.”

“Right, right. Is someone with you?”

“Uh huh.”

“No, I mean are you _with_ someone, like am I interrupting the great Timberlake getting his freak on?”

“Fuck. Yes. And I’m sure that makes you very happy. What did you want?”

“Guy or girl?”

“None of your fucking business. I’m going to hang up right now if you don’t start talking.”

“Yeah, whatever. As a best friend you kind of suck, man. Look, here’s the thing. When I saw Joey in New York last week, he said. Well, somehow, probably because he’s such a dumbass, Joey got this fucked up idea that maybe I have this, this _thing_ , sort of, I guess. A _thing_. For Lance.” He pauses and waits for Justin’s whoop of derision. “For _Lance_.” Pause. “For Lance _Bass_. Dude? Justin? Hey! Are you listening to me?”

“Mmm. Nnh. Yeahhh.”

“You fucking are not, you stupid bastard. What the hell are you doing?”

“Nnnnh. Oh, God!”

“You little shit! Tell her to get the fuck off your dick when I’m talking to you!”

“Unhhh. What? Ohhhh. Look, mmm, sorry, Chris, but, oh fuck. Later man.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There’s no point trying to phone JC. He almost never answers the phone and he’s really proud of himself if he remembers to check his voice mail once a week. Chris is pretty sure he’s still in L.A. though, so he heads to the airport and many miserable hours later he’s ringing JC’s doorbell and swearing at himself for forgetting to bring the key.

He’s tired and cranky and way more sober than he’d like to be thanks to an over-zealous stewardess who refused to serve him alcohol when he tripped on the way to his seat and threw his carry-on luggage into the air, spilling its contents into the aisle and onto the laps of six or seven other passengers. Could have happened to anyone, really, but the guy who was hit in the temple by a flying bottle of aftershave got all shirty and threatened to sue the airline for allowing drunks on board, and the upshot was the flight crew made some unholy pact not to serve any more booze to Chris.

JC finally opens the door just as Chris has decided to give up and go home. Wrapped in a pale pink blanket, eyes half closed against the sun or maybe because he’s still mostly asleep, he says, “Yes? Yes?” in a petulant voice before he recognizes Chris. “Oh! It’s you!”

He throws open the blanket and pulls Chris in for a hug.

“Cut that out, man!” Chris wrests himself from JC’s arms and backs up quickly. “You’re naked! Just, just keep your bits off me, dude!”

Laughing, JC lets Chris drag the blanket closed and push him backwards into the hallway. “Chris! You’re here! I missed you!”

He’s coming at Chris again and Chris can see him getting ready to spread his arms -- and blanket -- wide for another hug. “Stop! Stop right there! Shit, get some clothes on that skanky body, dude, and maybe - maybe - I’ll think about hugging you. So. I take it you’re talking to me again.”

JC smiles at him like Chris is five years old and has just said something adorable. “I was only mad for a couple of days. Sometimes you just overreact to things. I know that and it’s cool, you know? We’re cool.”

“I wasn’t--. Oh, fuck it. You got any beer?”

“Sure. Of course. What kind?” JC rearranges the blanket artfully over his shoulder and around his waist until it looks like some kind of frou frou toga and leads Chris into the kitchen.

“How about a Becks?”

“Um, no, sorry,” JC’s opened the refrigerator and is poking around in its depths.

“Corona?”

“No.”

“Coors?”

“No.”

“Heineken?”

“Um. Hmm. No, not really.”

“What do you mean, not really? Either you have it or you don’t.”

“Well, I guess I used to but the bottle is empty.”

Chris nudges him out of the way and peers into the fridge which, apart from a collection of take out containers, some milk and juice cartons on the top shelf and a lone bottle of Heineken -- empty, Chris confirms --  is pretty much barren.

“Why do you keep an empty bottle in your fridge?”

“It’s to remind me to buy more.”

“Good plan. Apparently needs a bit of work.” Chris stares unhappily into the fridge. “You don’t have any beer, C.”

“No. I guess I don’t. Sorry. I have wine, though. Lots of wine.” JC waves vaguely toward one of his cupboards. “And more in the basement. And, oh, yeah, I have gin.” He crosses the room and opens a cupboard that’s crammed with a selection of wine bottles - all full - and a lone bottle of Tanqueray, also, Chris is happy to note, full.

“Gin, yeah. Good. You got orange juice?” He turns back to the fridge, but there’s only guava juice and some green slop that looks like liquefied dill pickles.

“Okay, whatever. Gin and guava juice. Probably won’t kill me. And if you’ve got anything to eat in those boxes that doesn’t involve tofu or soy cheese, do you think I could have some of that, too? I’m starving, man.”

Somehow JC manages to keep the blanket in place as he pours gin and guava juice into a glass and throws some ice on top.

“Here, take it,” he says, passing the glass to Chris, “and go sit. I’ll bring you something to eat.”

JC’s living room is a scary place. Chris has been here before, many times, but for some reason, every time he walks into this cool, clean expanse of straight lines and sharp corners, it’s like it’s the first time. It feels, in fact, as though he’s the first person ever to have entered the room, the first human to make contact with an alien landscape. It’s not a good feeling. He feels lonely before he even crosses the threshold.

There’s nothing out of place in here. No magazines or books on the coffee table. No CD cases on top of the stereo. No jackets or sweaters or hats forgotten on the backs of chairs, no random shoes poking out from under the couch. It’s just a frozen tableau of blues and whites and greys, hard, unfriendly angles and bleak, chilly paintings. Even the candles, centred perfectly on their holders and placed precisely on immaculate surfaces, are hard, unfriendly little cubes. It’s what Chris imagines a waiting room between heaven and hell might look like, and it makes him nervous to be alone here.

Choosing the couch he knows to be the least sadistic piece of furniture in the room, he perches on it carefully, politely, allowing it to become accustomed to his weight before he relaxes into one corner. You can’t be too careful with JC’s furniture. It’s vicious and he’s been bitten before.

Now that he’s here, he’s having a hard time remembering why he came. Lance and thoughts of Lance seem very far away. Much less pressing than the need to get shit faced in the shortest possible amount of time, for example. He smiles to himself in relief. Maybe this is really all he needed. Just something familiar to ground him and make him remember who he is and who he doesn’t want to fuck. And just to make everything perfect, JC almost definitely has some seriously kick-ass weed around the place, because you can always count on C for a wicked high even if his catering skills leave a lot to be desired.

When JC comes into the room, he’s carrying two plates, a couple of napkins and a glass of red wine. He’s still wearing the blanket, but now it’s tucked around his waist like a bulky skirt and it trails behind him in a woolly pink wake. Chris isn’t sure how he’s managing not to fall flat on his face, but JC doesn’t look troubled.

“Here you go.” He passes one of the plates to Chris who eyes it cautiously before accepting the esoteric collection of food – a slice of pizza, noodles (pad Thai, maybe), a wedge of brie or camembert, some pickled artichoke hearts, a mound of something that might be potato if it weren’t sprouting leathery black bumps that look a little bit like raisins and even more like mouse droppings, three sushi rolls and a piece of chocolate cake. It occurs to Chris to wonder how long this smorgasbord has been collecting bacteria in JC’s fridge, but he doesn’t ask. He’s hungry and he’s probably eaten worse.

JC sits cross-legged in the chair facing the couch, the chair that is all straight edges, unyielding planes and uncompromising angles. It’s almost as uncomfortable as it looks; Chris knows because he’s made the mistake of sitting in it more than once, but JC just gives a contented sigh as he settles back and starts eating. “Freak,” thinks Chris affectionately.

Neither of them speaks until both their plates are empty. Ordinarily this would irritate Chris. He finds JC’s sudden shifts into silence confusing and annoying, and he usually responds by tickling him, throwing things at him or moving rapidly in and out of his line of vision until JC either snaps out of it or retreats to a different room. He’s pretty sure that JC will have a coronary if Chris starts throwing food around this pristine room, though, and moving quickly with a plate full of food is pretty much the same as throwing it, so he just joins JC in the silence, letting the familiar rhythm of chewing and swallowing smother his thoughts as he works his way through the food.

By the time he’s shoved the last piece of sushi into his mouth, his tolerance for quiet has reached its limit. He thinks about the stewardess on the plane and he starts to tell JC about her, intending to turn it into a joke. “So, on the plane, on the way back,” but he looks over at JC who’s smiling serenely at him like Buddha in a skirt, and he doesn’t think he can make the story funny, he’s not sure he can make anything funny right now, and before he can close his mouth he hears himself saying, “So, Joey thinks I wanna do Lance.”

“Joey was on the plane?” JC looks confused, but not as confused as Chris feels.

“What are you talking about? Why in the hell would Joey have been on the plane?”

“Well, you said. You said something about the plane. And Joey on the plane. So I thought. But I knew he wasn’t, so.”

Chris glares at him. “I never said he was on the plane. He wasn’t on the plane. And you know what? I think you’re kind of missing the bigger point here. I’m talking about what he _said_.”

“Right. Sorry. Go on.” JC smiles at him expectantly.

“Shit. So. He says he thinks I’ve got a thing for Lance.”

JC is still smiling expectantly. “Mm hm?”

“Are you even listening to me?” Chris slams his plate down on the glass surface of the coffee table, regretting it almost immediately because he just knows by its smug expression that the table is going to get its revenge before he leaves the room, probably by grabbing his ankles and knocking him face first onto the floor. “I _said_. Joey thinks I want to get with Lance. _Laaance_.

“Mmm. Lance. Yeah.” JC’s staring at a spot somewhere over Chris’ left shoulder with a dreamy look on his face. “Who doesn’t?”

“Shut up, you freak. _I_ don’t, that’s who. You’re no fucking help at all.”

“Oh, you do so. You know you do. I mean, _Lance_. He’s, um. _Hot_. Really hot. And smart, too. And that’s hot all by itself. Because, smart guys. Yeahhh. Sexy. I just love smart guys. You too, huh?”

“Oh, fuck you. I do not like smart guys. Well, yeah, maybe I do. But I don’t like Lance. Well, yeah, I do, of course. But not like that. I don’t, I’m pretty sure I don’t have a thing for him. I mean. I mean, I’d know, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I know?”

“Oh.”

“ _Oh? Oh?_ I come to you for advice and the benefit of your vast gay experience and all you have to offer is ‘ _oh_ ’? Cause, see, that’s just not helping. That’s making me want to smack you.”

“Oh. I mean, no. I’m sorry. It’s just. Well, I thought you _knew_. And, hey! What vast gay experience? You make me sound like some kind of slut or something.”

“You _are_ a slut, C. What did you think I knew?”

“I am not a slut. That’s just. It’s rude. And it’s not true.”

“Okay, fine. You’re not a slut. How many guys did you fuck last week? And what did you think I knew?”

“Oh, shut up. It wasn’t _that_ many. Not enough to make me a slut. Well, maybe just a bit slutty. Sort of trampish, maybe. But, you know, it’s not like you’ve never slept with more than one person in a week.”

“Yeah, well. I never said I wasn’t a slut. I’ve had my slutty moments. Slutty weeks. Years. Whatever. What the fuck did you think I knew?”

JC looks puzzled for a second. “Oh! Right. About the thing. I thought you knew. Because I knew. I don’t know about the others, but I did. For, I don’t know, years, I guess. I just assumed you knew, too. I mean. Well, it just makes sense, doesn’t it? But you’re saying you didn’t?”

“I’m saying I hate you. I’m saying I wish you’d learn English because it would be really nice to actually have an intelligible conversation with you occasionally.”

“Fuck you, Chris. If you’re going to be an ass, I’m going back to bed. I’ve had like two hours sleep and I’m tired and you come here and eat my food and drink my gin and call me a slut and now you’re getting all in my face and insulting me? You can just figure this out by yourself. It’s only taken you half a decade to get this far, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

JC stands and starts to gather his blanket which is threatening to slip its moorings again, and Chris jumps up to stop him, leaning across the coffee table and grabbing his wrist.

“Wait! Wait, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, man. You’re right, I’m being an ass. I’m just. I’m trying to make sense of this thing, if there even is a thing, which I don’t know if there is or not, and it’s making me crazy. So, please. Just sit down and talk to me.”

“Oh, Chris.” JC climbs across the coffee table and gives Chris a hug. “You’re pretty fucked up about this, aren’t you?” He pushes Chris back onto the couch and settles in beside him.

“I was just saying, I knew you had a crush on Lance, I’ve known since, I don’t know, since sometime before we left Germany. I just assumed you knew, too. Because you would, wouldn’t you? Except, apparently you didn’t. Huh. Anyhow, I figured you’d just decided not to jump him because of that really annoying rule that you made us all agree to, you know, that ‘stay away from each others’ dicks’ rule that you were so stuck on. So. Yeah. You really didn’t know? Wild.”

Chris stares at his hands for a few long moments. This wasn’t possible. You couldn’t be hot for someone for six years and not know it. You just couldn’t. Could you?

“You couldn’t be hot for someone for _six years_ and not know it, could you? I mean, it’s crazy. It’s stupid. It’s just. It’s stupid.”

JC leans over and rubs Chris’ knee. “It is pretty stupid. But you know,” he eyes Chris cautiously, “you’re like that sometimes. Stupid about the obvious stuff. No, no, wait, I don’t mean. I’m not trying to piss you off, I’m just saying. Like, how long did it take you to actually believe that Dani loved you? I don’t think you really accepted it until maybe a couple of months before you broke up.”

“Yeah, maybe, but I knew how _I_ felt, C. I knew that _I_ loved _her_.”

“Mm. Except. Well. I don’t think you did, really. I mean, yeah, okay, you knew you loved her, but you didn’t really. Love her, that is. Not like that. Did you? Because I think you really liked her a lot, and who wouldn’t, Dani’s great, and you probably thought she was terrific to be with and fun and, well, I’m sure the sex was great, because she just had that kind of vibe, you know? And I think you really _wanted_ to love her in an ‘in love’ kind of way. But I don’t think you did, Chris.” He’s still rubbing his fingers over Chris’ knee in a sympathetic sort of way, and Chris is vacillating between wanting to snap them like toothpicks and asking him to rub harder.

“I did so love her. You don’t know shit.”

“Yeah, okay. But, you didn’t.”

“I did. Shut up.”

“You didn’t, Chris.” He stares at Chris, doesn’t even look away when Chris bares his teeth at him and slaps his hand away.

“So what if I did or didn’t. What’s your point, Chasez? You do have a point, right?”

“My point is you _do_ like Lance. You’ve been all over him for years. Watching him. Touching him. Hating his boyfriends. Making him laugh when he gets too serious. Playing mean jokes on him when he ignores you.”

“Mean jokes. Well, of course. How romantic is that?”

“Not very, I’d say, but it’s kind of what you do when you’re flirting with someone, Chris. You’re a bit. Mmm. Immature. Sometimes. No offence.”

JC’s fingers are back on his knee, smoothing out the denim, smoothing the feeling of panic Chris can feel percolating under the surface.

“But, C, I’d know if I liked him. Wouldn’t I?”

JC just looks at him and rubs gentle circles on his knee.

“Wouldn’t I?”

“What do you feel when you think about Lance?”

“What? How the hell would I know? I don’t know.”

“Well, just. Just think about him for a minute. Just relax and get a good mental image of him and then think about how you feel.”

“This is stupid. But fine, whatever. Wait. Just. Let me, uh.”

Chris closes his eyes and thinks about Lance, lets the idea of Lance fill his head. A series of images flashes quickly, one after the other: Lance. Lance as a teenager, big-eyed and dorky, uncertain and gauche as only a teenager can be; Lance with his eyes closed, singing, mouth curved into a private smile; Lance hunkered over his laptop, frowning in concentration and chewing his lower lip; Lance sprawled on the couch, head tipped onto Joey’s shoulder, tee shirt rucked up showing a narrow sliver of pale skin;. Lance in the hospital, weak and white like chalk or flour or corpses, and smiling, petals in his hair from the bouquet that Chris has just dismembered and flung about the room; Lance in the diner in New York, cool and confident and cross and tucked so snugly into his crisp blue jeans.

And then there are the sounds, that deep, thick voice all rich and warm with sleep; the satisfying shriek he emits when Chris gooses him during rehearsal; the slow, measured breathing as he struggles for patience; his clipped, controlled diction when something’s pissed him off or when he’s trying to hide his embarrassment or shyness; the sudden bark of laughter when Chris has startled him out of a bad mood.

His hands start replaying the warmth of Lance’s skin against his palms and his body remembers the times Lance slumped against him in exhaustion during rehearsal, the times he’s supported Lance’s giggly, drunken weight when they’ve staggered back to a hotel room after a night of partying.

And how does he feel? He feels like someone has just yanked his guts out of his ears and is trying to stuff them back in through his nostrils. His heart is pounding. His ears are ringing like church bells. He’s torn between exhilaration and wanting to lose his lunch all over JC’s carpet.

“Oh, Christ. Fucking hell.”

“So. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t a bad thing, Chris. It’s good, it’s kind of sweet, really.”

“Yeah, well you’re kind of off your flaming rocker, _really_. Sweet, my fat ass. What the fuck am I going to do now?”

“Well, you could, I don’t know. Seduce him?”

“Seduce _Lance_? That’s just. That’s. I wouldn’t even know how to begin. And, hello? What about the rule? The no going near one another’s dicks rule? We all swore, man. We swore.”

“Yeah. Well. Um, some of us kind of took that rule a bit more seriously than others, if you know what I mean.”

“No, C, I _don’t_ know what you mean. _Who_ didn’t take it seriously?””

“Actually. Mm. Well. None of us did. Except you, of course. You were, like, all over the rule. But, you know how it is. It gets lonely when we’re on the road, and there’s really only so many groupies you can fool around with before you start to just feel dirty, so, you know. Joey and me, just a couple of times. And Lance and J did a bit of experimenting, here and there. I mean they were kids. Hormones. You know.”

“You and _Joey_? No way! Joey’s straight. I know he’s straight, so don’t fucking tell me he isn’t cause he is.”

“No, yeah, he is. Totally. Pretty much, anyway. He just has these, like, little gay episodes. Sort of like seizures, or something. And then he wants to get his dick sucked by a guy, and sometimes, if he’s had a few drinks or if he’s just feeling, I don’t know, _reciprocal_ , or something, he’ll return the favour. So we did stuff like that a few times. Just once in a while, you know?”

“How often?”

“Oh, well, who counts? Three or four times. Maybe fifteen. Coupla dozen. I’m not sure.”

“But just with Joey? I mean, you never, not with _Justin_ , right? He’s just a kid, for Christ’s sake!”

“Oh, he is not. That boy’s dick has been places you and I can’t even imagine. But, no, not with Justin. Except once a few months ago, because I was really bored and he asked. And one time last year. But he and I get on one another’s nerves too much to make it a regular thing.”

“How about. What about.” Chris looks down at JC’s hand on his knee. “Lance? You and Lance?”

JC sighs. “No. Except for the fooling around with Justin back in Germany, Lance pretty much kept to the rule. He probably wouldn’t have broken it at all, but Justin went all pouty and pathetic on him, you know how he used to, and just whined and whined and threw his little fits until Lance caved. Other than that, he hasn’t, he doesn’t do stuff with us.”

Annoyed at the relief this brings, Chris gives JC’s fingers a mean little pinch. “Fuckers,” he mutters. “You’re all stupid fuckers.”

JC just snickers and moves his hand a littler further up Chris’ leg to return the pinch.

“Ow, stop it!” Chris bats at his hand, which stays pretty much exactly where it is. “And try to give me some help here, man. I mean. How am I going. Okay, assume, just for a second, okay, just assume that I wanna be an ass like the rest of you and ignore the rule, what am I going to do? I mean, it’s _Lance_. I can’t just. What do I _say_?”

“Well, just. I don’t know. Why don’t you just tell him you’ve been hot for him since you can remember and the rule was stupid and now you want to screw his brains out to get it out of your system.”

“It wasn’t a stupid rule. You guys are just morons. And, C, it’s not like. I don’t think it’s like you and Joe. I’m not sure I can be casual about this. I mean, what if I can’t get him out of my system? What if he’s, like, infiltrated my system? I mean, for fuck’s sake, my palms are sweaty just thinking about touching him.”

“What part?”

“What?”

“What part of him are you thinking of touching? That makes your palms sweat?”

“Oh, um, his throat. Just, you know, thinking about that little indentation right, um,” he reaches over and runs his finger lightly over the little dip just beneath JC’s Adam’s apple. “Right there. Thinking about stroking him right there.”

“Yeah. Hmm. Okay, that’s interesting. When I think about touching Joey, it’s mostly his dick.” JC smiles in reminiscence. “He has a really great dick.”

“Shut up, Chasez! Man, I appreciate you trying to be all supportive and shit, but whoa. I’d just be so grateful if we could leave Joey’s dick out of the conversation.”

JC looks worried for a moment, as though he’s not sure it’s possible to have this discussion without Joey’s dick playing a major role, but then he says, “No, fine, less of Joey’s dick. I’m just saying, Chris,” as he edges closer, “Maybe this thing with Lance is more than just wanting to, you know, get freaky with him. I mean I’m sure you want that too, like I said, who doesn’t? But, you know, if you’re getting all hot at the idea of just touching him, touching his neck, well, it’s got to be. And you’ve been kind of in denial for years, and that’s more than just a fucking thing. It’s got to be something. Something more.”

“More _what_ , though?” Chris hears the whine in his voice but doesn’t much care. He’s feeling pretty hopeless at this point. Nothing about this visit is going the way he’d envisioned when he’d decided to come to LA. He’d imagined himself sitting in JC’s horrible living room (well, okay, that part was going pretty much exactly as he’d pictured), listening to JC agree with him that Joey was a couple of croutons short of a salad, that whatever Chris feels about Lance now is due to some kind of post hypnotic suggestion, that somehow Joey has tapped into Chris’ subconscious and planted this crazy _idea_ , this idea that is obviously temporary and not even real and not even worth mentioning at all really so let’s just have a beer and watch porn and get this crack idea out of your system. But nothing is happening the way he’d imagined, not least the part about how in his fantasy of this conversation JC had been wearing pants and hadn’t been, in fact, almost sitting in his lap. “More _what_ , JC?”

“I think you maybe like him a lot. And don’t say you like all of us, you know that’s not what I’m talking about. I mean _like_ like, the kind of like where you, well, like the kind you thought you had with Dani, only maybe this time you really do. You know. Like maybe you love him.”

Chris just stares at him. He wants to say something snarky and dismissive, something to shut JC up and maybe hurt him in the bargain, because what the _fuck_.

“Oh, shit. _Shit_. C, look, I really don’t know what to do here. I need to. Look. Can you please not say anything to the other guys about this? I just, I need to figure some shit out before everybody starts getting in my business. You know?”

JC is still petting his leg, and Chris watches his hand stroking and patting in short, sympathetic bursts, a steadying punctuation for his chaotic jumble of thoughts. It feels good, relaxing. Or perhaps not so much relaxing as distracting. Distracting in an “I haven’t had sex in way too long, but I sure remember why I like it so much” kind of way.

“Of course not, Chris. I won’t say anything. Don’t worry about it, okay? You’ll figure this out and …” JC trails off and when Chris looks back up at his face, he’s looking slightly flushed and he’s chewing nervously on his lower lip.

“I was thinking, Chris …”

“Uh. Um. Yeah?” Chris is having a hard time pulling his attention away from JC’s mouth.

“I just. Well, I was thinking, you know, um, just. Since the rest of us have pretty much already trashed the whole rule thing anyway, and since you’re probably going to do the same any day now, well, I thought. Maybe. Would you. How about.” He takes a deep breath and slides his fingers slowly and firmly up the inside of Chris’ thigh, bringing his other hand up and planting it in the centre of Chris’ chest and suddenly his face is so close that Chris can taste the wine and chocolate that linger on his breath and can see the wet pink marks that JC’s teeth have worried onto his lips, and Chris’ heart is slamming against the wall of his chest, against JC’s warm and solid hand, as JC whispers “Can I blow you?”

For one insane second, he thinks of turning away, of pushing JC off and heading for the door. Except, as a part of his body that almost definitely isn’t his brain points out, in a lifetime of reasons and rationalizations and desperate defences, there can be no possible argument compelling enough to justify turning away from the promise of those wet lips wrapped around his dick. And before another part of his body, the one that is his brain, has a chance to interject, Chris waves his hand vaguely and unsteadily in the general direction of his crotch.

“Dude,” he gasps, “knock yourself out.”

 

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It’s like opening a cupboard and having all the crap you’ve been storing for the last billion years come tumbling down on top of you. You’ve got no idea what to do with it and you know there’s no way you’re ever going to fit it all back in. Accepting the possibility that Joey might be right has led to an avalanche of Lance-related realizations and insights, and try as he might, Chris just can’t seem to fend them off.

He had a brief moment of panic after leaving JC’s, wondering if maybe he’s been harbouring an unsuspected infatuation for _his_ ass all these years on top of the thing for Lance. But when he called JC to ask (on his cell, about twenty feet from JC’s front door), JC just snickered rudely and said, “Well, you may have wanted to jump my ass, but you’ve never wanted to marry it, so I think you’re safe, dude.” So, that’s good, but it still leaves the Lance question.

The important thing, he thinks, is to never be anywhere that Lance is until he sorts this out. This would be a lot simpler if he actually knew where Lance was going to be, but Lance hasn’t been all that predictable since he came back from Russia. He just tends to show up out of the blue, looking tired, neatly pressed and unbelievably sexy, and then he disappears again just as mysteriously. New York is the least safe place to be, because Joey’s there, and Orlando’s probably a risk too, but that leaves the rest of the country, not to mention the rest of the world, so he figures he’s okay.

The guys came over the night before he left to throw him an impromptu going away party, taking advantage of the increasingly rare occurrence of their all happening to be in Orlando at the same time. He was feeling antisocial and crabby and would have said no if they’d given him a chance, but he opened the door on Saturday evening expecting the pizza delivery guy, and they’d swarmed him, his four best friends in the world spilling across his threshold, in a boisterous wave of hugs and hair pulling and back poundings.

Apart from everything else, the occasion gave him the opportunity to observe Lance, do a bit of subtle reconnoitring to see if perhaps, possibly, just maybe there might be a flicker of interest there. It also allowed him to observe himself in Lance’s orbit and reassure himself that he was able to spend an evening in the same room without doing anything too horribly idiotic. Like licking his thighs or something. Because even though he was going to bed every night with thoughts of Lance lying like a solid weight beside him and waking every morning hard and aching from Lance-infested dreams, he still held onto the possibility that he and Joey and JC were all completely off base and that his unprecedented physical and emotional reactions to Lance were due to something else entirely. Multiple personality disorder, perhaps.

Two minutes in Lance’s company pretty much shot that theory out of the water. Because even if his mind was willing to look for escape clauses to this ridiculous situation, his body apparently had no interest in maintaining any such polite fiction of indifference. Chris knew he was lost when he had to stamp hard on his own instep to make his arms unwrap themselves from the hug Lance pulled him into.

He spent the rest of the evening trying not to stand too close to Lance, no simple thing with only the five of them there. Mostly he wasn’t able to manage it, which meant that he also spent the rest of the evening stopping himself from doing things that he wanted but wouldn’t let himself do. Like thumbing the little smear of green icing from the corner of Lance’s mouth. Like rubbing his hand along the seam of Lance’s pants when he bent over to put the plates in the dishwasher. Like wanting to set fire to Justin’s socks when he patted Lance’s ass or slung an arm casually around his shoulder. Like getting down on his knees and begging Lance to please please please throw out some kind of hint, one way or the other.

It didn’t help that he kept catching both Joey and JC watching him with the same rapt absorption they’d give to their favourite movie. When they noticed him noticing, they’d just smile encouragingly and shoo him towards Lance. Lance didn’t react at all to any of Chris’ tentative approaches, possibly, Chris thinks in retrospect, because his approaches were a bit too subtle, consisting mostly of not talking about or grabbing Lance’s ass more than twice during the whole night and not being able to take his eyes off him unless he actually left the room.

On the plus side, Lance only lost his temper with Chris twice, once when Chris gave an admittedly offensive impression of the last guy Lance dated, and again when he shoved a slice of pizza down the front of Lance’s new khakis because. Well, because he was pretty much feeling no pain at that point and it seemed like an amusing thing to do. Also on the plus side, the evening convinced him that getting out of Dodge for a while was definitely a good idea.

He stays in L.A. for a couple of days until a hankering for jazz and Zydeco gumbo takes him to New Orleans, and then he _has_ to go to New York because ‘Justified’ is about to drop and he promised Justin he’d be there. He narrowly misses seeing Lance, which really pisses him off because Joey’s on the west coast so it should have been safe. After that he heads for Chicago. It’s not impossible that Lance will show up there, but he can’t think of any reason he would, and in any case he has a voucher for a couple of free nights at the Drake Hotel because last time he and Justin stayed there Justin threw a sustained and very vocal tantrum in the lobby when they told him the Presidential Suite was already booked. Traveling with Justin can be great fun that way - free show _and_ free goodies.

He’s been doing a lot of drinking and toking since he left JC’s and not much of anything else. By the time he gets to Chicago, shaky and wired and tired to the bone, he realizes that he hasn’t eaten anything other than bar snacks for a good three days. He also realizes that he’s no closer to figuring out a strategy for the whole Lance thing, and that he’s going to have to see him in a couple of days because they’re all getting together for a barbeque at Justin’s place in L.A. He can’t blow them off because he’s already promised and he knows Justin’s still feeling a bit lost, out there doing his thing alone, and the barbeque is his way of grounding himself. This is it, he tells himself. Crunch time. He’s going to sit in this hotel room--this hotel _suite_ \--and he’s not going to budge and he’s not going to drink or smoke up until he’s made some decisions.

After two and half days of watching crappy pay TV porn, playing video games and lounging around in the hot tub, he’s starting to feel restless and tense. He doesn’t want to be alone with the thoughts that keep dragging him back over the same ground. His head is a wilderness these days and he hates being left alone to explore it. No matter how many times he revisits this particular landscape, he’s always lost. He needs a compass. Or a guide. Or a lobotomy. He needs Lance to get the fuck out of his brain and leave him in peace.

It’s nuts. He’s thirty-one years old and he wonders how he can feel every one of those years and still feel so young and stupid and completely unprepared. It’s like a horrible flashback to his teenage years, being afraid to make the first move, unsure about whether he’s reading the signals right, terrified of looking like a complete idiot.

He feels a sudden surge of resentment that Lance can make him feel so completely inept without even trying, and he wants to punch the wall. Or fly back to Orlando and pinch Lance’s cheeks really hard. Then maybe kiss them better.

Instead, he yanks open the door of the mini-bar and drags out all the little bottles, lining them up in front of him on the coffee table. Scotch. Gin. Red wine. White wine. Cognac. Beer (three kinds). Rum (light and dark). Grand Marnier. Brandy. His mood lifts at the sight of them, and really, sobriety hasn’t done him any good whatsoever. He starts with the Grand Marnier because he know if he saves it for last he’ll just puke and waste the whole binge.

When he’s down to the last couple of bottles and feeling pleasantly numb, he thinks about going to bed but the restless edge isn’t completely muted. He’s been watching TV, flipping between a soccer match that he really couldn’t give a shit about and an old sci fi flick he’s almost positive he’s seen at least three times and it’s really boring but he doesn’t want to turn it off because he still can’t remember how it ends. The last time he watched it he was with Lance, he thinks. Maybe Lance can tell him how it ends and then he won’t have to watch it any more.

Lance answers on the fifteenth ring.

“Mm, yeah?” His voice is low, thick with sleep, curling into Chris like smoke and syrup and teasing through the alcohol haze. He pictures Lance, buried in blankets, all warm and bleary and rumpled, maybe even naked, and that’s a mistake because suddenly he can’t remember why he called.

He’s about to hang up when Lance says, “Mmm, yeah? Hello? Chris, is that you?” He should have used the hotel phone instead of his cell. Fucking call display. Fucking Lance for being alert enough to check his fucking call display.

“Yeah. Hey, dude. What’s up?”

“Not me. Do you have any idea what time it is?” He still sounds sleepy and delicious, but Chris can hear a hint of irritation just below the surface.

“No, but I can check if you like. Why? There some place you have to be?”

“I’m trying to _sleep_ , here, Chris. What do you _want_?”

“You’re in bed?”

“It’s three in the morning. Yes, I’m in bed. Where the hell else would I be?”

“What are you wearing?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Just. You know. What are you wearing?”

“Fuck.” Lance sighs heavily, but it’s okay, because Chris recognizes it as Lance’s “this-is-so-stupid-but-okay-whatever” sigh, so he knows he’s going to get an answer. “I’m wearing boxers. Why?”

“Which ones?”

“Which _ones_? Like you have all my boxers memorized?”

The crazy thing is, he thinks maybe he does. Unless Lance has bought new ones since they were on tour, which, yeah, of course he has. But still, it’s pretty wild all the same. “No, I mean, what colour?”

“Can you just get to the punch line? Because I’m tired and I have to get up in like three hours and I’m really not in the mood for this right now.”

“Yeah, but what _colour_ , dude?”

“Green.”

“Okay. Good. That’s good, Lance. Forest green? Olive green? Lime green?”

“You’re drunk, aren’t you? You’re such a jerk, Kirkpatrick.” He’s quiet for so long that Chris thinks maybe he’s hung up and he’s just about to press re-dial when Lance yawns and says, “More like an apple green. You know, like Granny Smith apples. And there’s a pattern on them, little red somethings, I can’t remember what they are and it’s dark so I can’t make them out.”

“Turn on the light.”

“Go to hell. Chris. I need you to tell me why you called, because I really hope it wasn’t to check on my underwear.”

“It might have been.”

“Goodbye. I’m going back to sleep now.”

“No, no. Wait. I called because. Well, I needed to ask you about something, something. About, um. Well, I kind of forget what it was now, but wait! Don’t hang up on me, dude, there’s something else. See, a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to Joey. And then a few days ago I talked to JC. And it just kind of got me thinking, you know--. What the fuck was that? Are you snoring?”

“Just yawning. Go on.”

“Right. Um. Right. Where was I?”

“You talked to Joey and JC and it got you thinking. Evidence to the contrary, notwithstanding.”

“What? Oh, yeah. I just started kind of thinking about, well, you know, rules and things, gentlemen’s agreements, I guess you could say, that we had, even though JC tells me that some people apparently have never heard of the concept. And anyway, I was just kind of wondering. Well, I know that you. Not with JC, he said not anyway, but I was wondering . . .”

“You know I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about, don’t you? How much did you drink, anyway?”

“Not that much. Just some of the shit from the mini-bar. You know, small bottles. Not much.”

“Yeah? How many small bottles?”

“All of them now,” says Chris, swallowing the last of the vodka. “Ahh. Good stuff. You should be here. We could’ve, I don’t know, made a punch or something.”

“Riiight. Maybe next time. Chris, what did you want to ask me?”

“Oh, yeah. Look, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. It can wait. Go back to sleep.”

“Chris.”

“No, it’s fine, really. Just. Sleep.”

“I’m actually pretty much awake now. You may as well ask me.”

“I could sing you a lullaby. Put you right back to sleep.” He closes his eyes and starts humming quietly into the phone, some song that he can remember his mother singing to his sisters when they were babies. She probably sang it to him, too, he thinks with a smile, and he tries to remember the words, but the only ones that come back are “ _in the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty / I want to be / in the warm hold of your loving mind_ ” and “ _ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind_ ” and they seem too depressingly appropriate for him to want to remember the rest. It’s a pretty tune, though, and he’s almost asleep himself when Lance says, “Chris! Just. Ask me. The question. Please.”

And there’s something in his voice, other than exasperation, something that Chris can’t quite place. It’s not quite worry and it’s not quite fear, although maybe it’s coloured by both, but there’s definitely an odd tightness to the words that makes Chris pause. He could end all this bullshit right now, he thinks, find out one way or the other where this is going to go with just a few well chosen words.

And what’s the worst that can happen, after all? So, Lance laughs at him. Or tells him to go fuck himself. Or both. It’s not like that’s never happened before. Lance is always laughing at him and telling him to go fuck himself. At least Chris will know. At least he won’t have to lie awake brooding about how to get him between his sheets. At least he won’t still be contemplating calling up a random sampling of Lance’s exes to find out what kind of pick up lines they’d used to snag him and whether Lance has ever mentioned Chris in a “gee-I-kinda-wish-he’d-start-macking-on-me” sort of context. And maybe it will feel awkward for a few minutes when they see each other next, but it won’t last because, whatever else they are, they’re friends first and he knows Lance won’t let a little unwelcome crush get in the way of that.

And maybe Lance won’t laugh. Or tell him to go fuck himself.

The idea of putting all the uncertainty behind him is suddenly starting to seem more appealing than terrifying, and it’s with a great sense of relief that he finally accepts it as the only rational way out of this mess.

He’s taken completely by surprise, therefore, when he hears himself saying, “So, JC said that you fucked around with Justin back in Germany and I was just wondering if you, like, sucked Joey’s dick when you guys spent so much time together on the other bus?”

He’s not at all surprised when the only response he gets is a quiet click as Lance disconnects.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The rest of the guys are already there when he shows up at Justin’s. JC is perched on the kitchen counter watching Justin pull food out of the fridge and Chris can see Lance and Joey out in the back yard sitting at the edge of the pool dangling their legs in the water and drinking beer. He tries not to notice how close they’re sitting.

“Yo, dawg. S’up?” Justin says, emerging from the fridge with an armful of lettuce and tomatoes and peppers. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been holding off starting the barbecue and Joey’s really starting to whine. You could have called, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. I just. Something came up. Hey, C.”

JC smiles at him, but it’s half-assed and not even remotely sincere and he goes right back to staring at Justin and the vegetables.

“Everything okay, dude? You look like someone just bit your dog.”

“Yeah. Uh huh. I’m fine.”

“Whatever you say. So what are we having, Timberlake? Tell me you got some fucking steak this time instead of those cheap ass burgers you keep feeding us.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I make killer burgers. You love my burgers, you fucker. But yeah. I’m doing steak. Or, if you keep pissing me off, I could always run out and pick up a few tofu patties for you.”

“I don’t love your burgers, man, I just love you cooking for me. Shows you haven’t forgotten your place. My own little kitchen boy.”

This is okay, this is familiar, Chris thinks, and he starts to relax, thinking maybe he can get through this evening.

After a while, he realizes that JC isn’t saying much. Or anything, really. He’s just sitting on the counter watching them quietly, but not in his sleepy-quiet way or his annoying meditative-quiet way or his caught-up-in-the-creative-flow-quiet way. He looks withdrawn and sad and maybe a little tense to boot.

“No, seriously, C, what’s up? Did Iron Chef here cut off your tongue? Hey, what kind of bird tongues did they used to make into pies, do you remember? Oh, wait, hummingbirds. Yeah. Oddly appropriate, maybe, but I think I’ll stick to steak. Give him his tongue back, Justin.”

JC gives him another polite little smile, because that’s just the way he is, but Chris is pretty sure he’s not even listening.

“Come on, you’re freaking me out here. What’s wrong?”

JC takes a deep breath and closes his eyes and looks about as enthusiastic as he might if Chris had just asked him to eat worms. Maybe actually a little less enthusiastic, because Chris, in fact, did make him eat worms several years ago when they were in Germany and JC was still gullible enough to let the rest of them sucker him into impossible bets.

Justin interrupts his chopping for a moment and pins Chris with a glare. “He’s upset because Lance just reamed him out. Apparently _somebody_ called Lance at ass o’clock in the morning to let him know that C was putting around this story about how Lance and me did it when we were kids.”

“You’re still a kid,” Chris says automatically. “Oh, shit JC, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I was drunk and. I didn’t even mean to say anything, or, well, I did, but that wasn’t it. It just kind of slipped out.”

JC’s bounces his feet against the cupboard doors and plays with the tear in his jeans. One of the many tears. The pants actually look like someone’s just dangled JC feet first into a wood chipper, Chris thinks, but they’re no more hideous than half the things he wears these days.

“It’s okay, Chris. It’s not like I asked you not to say anything.”

“No,” Justin snaps, “he kind of figured you’d have the brains to figure that out for yourself. Fuck, man, what were you thinking? You know how Lance hates it when everyone gets in his business. And to just dump JC in it. I mean _JC_ , of all people. That was just mean, dude.”

“Stop, Justin. I said it’s okay. I’m not mad at Chris. Or Lance. Or anyone. I’m not mad. I just. I wish I hadn’t said anything.”

“So,” Chris glances out toward the pool where Joey and Lance are still huddled together, “What did he say?”

JC looks uncomfortable. “I’m not really allowed to say. Sorry.”

“Not allowed? When did Lance become your mommy? You fucking wuss, you can’t let him push you around like that. Come on. Tell me. What did he say?”

“Chris, don’t. I just. He says if you have any more questions about who he’s fucked or when he fucked them, maybe you could do him the courtesy of asking him yourself.”

“Yeah, whatever. What else did he say? Like from the beginning, dude.”

“He said I was a jerk.”

“He’ll get over it, don’t worry. Did he say. Is he still pissed at me, too? Because, you know, he hung up in my ear last night. Fucker.”

“Hmm.”

“So, is he? Mad at me? Hello? You still in there?” He raps his knuckles against JC’s temple.

“Ask him yourself, Chris. I’m not getting in the middle of this again.”

“C, come on. I’m gonna find out as soon as I step outside anyway, so what difference can it make?”

“Leave him alone, Chris.” Justin gives JC’s knee a quick squeeze and picks up another tomato. “He’s all traumatized and shit. Look, why don’t you just get it over with. Go out and let him yell at you or whatever it is he needs to do to, because I’m not going near him until he’s calmed down or until he’s a whole lot drunker than he is right now. Which means we’re not going to be eating dinner until five in the morning if you don’t do something about this.”

“He’s mad at you, too?”

“Yeah. Well. I’d promised him I wouldn’t say anything to any one. About, you know. What we did. When we were kids. So, yeah. He’s all ‘you betrayed me’ and shit. But what the fuck. It happened years ago, right? I was underage when I made that promise, so it doesn’t really count, does it?”

“Um, I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Yeah, well, when I said that to him, he got even madder and thought I was calling him a child molester or something, but you know, fuck. We were both kids and I _was_ only sixteen, and he shouldn’t have expected me to remember it was a big fat secret for that long, should he?”

“Um, I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Anyway. I’m not apologizing. I mean, dude. Get over it. Right? And I could have had a really good reason for telling JC. Like, what if I’d been scarred for life by the experience and needed someone to help me figure shit out or something.”

“And were you? Scarred for life and trying to figure shit out? Is that why you told JC?”

“Well, in a sense. In a sort of sense, yeah.”

JC sighs. “He told me because he wanted me to know that I wouldn’t be the first to break the rule with him. Sorry, Justin, but I’m pretty tired of secrets right now.”

“Well, that’s kind of similar,” Justin grins at Chris. “I was all fucked up cause he, like, turned me into a slut.”

“Asshole,” says Chris fondly. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Halfway out the door it occurs to him to ask, “Hey, JC? You didn’t tell him _why_ you told me about him and Justin did you? I mean, you didn’t tell him about, um,” he glances nervously at Justin, not sure what he knows and kind of hoping it isn’t much because he doesn’t think he can stand the jokes he’s going to have to endure for the next millennium otherwise, “about, you know, what we talked about at your place the other day?”

JC has developed a suspicious interest in his frayed pants again and won’t meet Chris’ eyes. He just shrugs his shoulders and clears his throat and says, “Um.”

“You fucking bastard, you did! Didn’t you? You told him! I don’t believe this! You fucking promised.”

As Chris moves toward him, JC scoots back on the counter, pulling his legs up and wrapping his arms protectively around his knees. “But I _owed_ him, Chris. I owed him because I’d told you stuff about him that you weren’t supposed to know, and everything was all, I don’t know, out of balance, and he was, fuck, he was _really_ mad, Chris, and it just seemed like the only way to make it right. I had to.”

“So, you told him,” he glances surreptitiously at Justin again, “like, all of it?”

“I didn’t tell him I blew you.” Justin is snickering over the salad in a most unhelpful way. “Or that you blew me back. But, yeah. The rest of it.”

“Fuck this. Just. Fuck this. I’m going home.”

He’s heading for the door, but Justin grabs his shoulder and spins him around and, god, he misses the days when Justin was, like, three feet tall and Chris could toss him like a caber into the middle of next week without breaking a sweat. Justin shoves him up against the fridge and holds him there with one hand, his knee uncomfortably close to Chris’ groin.

Chris looks at the knife Justin is still holding in his other hand and says, “So, what? You going to give me a shave? Stop waving that thing around. If it even touches me, I’m going to de-nut you so fast you’ll be singing soprano in the Austrian Boys Choir before you even have time to scream.”

“You’re pathetic, you know that? Shit, dude. What the hell is your problem? So you wanna screw Lance. Who gives a fuck?” Well, that at least answers the question of how much Justin knows. Chris spares a withering look for JC but it’s pretty much a waste of good face because JC’s got his eyes closed in that way that he does when people fight around him, and he’s pretending to be somewhere else. “Look, you can’t avoid him forever. You’re in the same god damned band, for fucks sake, you’re bound to run into him occasionally. He’s not going to go away. This fucking mess isn’t going to go away. And it’s sure as hell not going to get any better if you just hide from it for the next few weeks like the big fat coward you are. Just. Fuck. Go fix this. You’re ruining my barbecue.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Chris mutters. He gives Justin a push, which doesn’t even budge him. “Seriously. Get off me right now, Justin.”

Justin moves away, but keeps his hand on Chris’ arm, squeezing gently. “Chris?”

“Fine. Okay? Fine, I’ll talk to him, just shut the fuck up and leave me alone. You suck. You both suck.”

Justin gives his arm a savage pinch and nods toward JC who’s still got his eyes closed and is looking thoroughly miserable. Relenting, Chris walks over, grabs JC by the back of his head and pulls him down for a quick kiss on the forehead. “Hey, don’t be an ass, C, it’s okay.” He tugs his hair gently until JC meets his eyes and smiles, and then he walks outside.

Joey and Lance are just getting to their feet, heading back to the kitchen for refills.

“Where the fuck have you been, you bastard!” Joey yanks him into a sweaty bear hug, lifting Chris off his feet and swinging him around. “I’m starving and fucking Timberlake wouldn’t fire up the grill until he saw your ugly face. Just for this you’re gonna have to do the dishes man. And maybe even vacuum.”

“Get off me, you shithead!” He’s pretty glad of the diversion, though, because it gives him a chance to sneak a peek at Lance to see whether an hour or two in Joey’s company has calmed him down at all.

Unfortunately, Lance is looking distinctly unreadable. Cool, aloof. Not quite like he’d prefer to be elsewhere, maybe more like he just doesn’t particularly care that he’s here. He’s wearing baggy green cargo shorts and a pristine white t-shirt and every inch of his exposed skin is glowing in a lickable, golden way that hits Chris like a bullet, and his eyes are bright like light on water and sharp like, like really sharp things, and Chris knows, beyond any doubt, beyond all question, that he is in no conceivable way even remotely equal to the conversation that must follow.

Lance is watching Joey manhandle Chris across Justin’s patio, with an expression that seems to vacillate between dispassionate and disdainful. He has one hand on his hip and he’s holding a beer bottle in the other, tapping it softly against his leg in a silent counterpoint to the smashing of Chris’ heart against his ribs. Chris wishes briefly that he could freeze this moment, hold it like a fly in amber for the rest of his days, this image of Lance so sternly beautiful, so painfully close and so impossibly far away, this moment of odds-against possibility and ridiculous hope. He has time to wonder if this image will become a permanent entry in his mental catalogue of the high and low points of his life, and then Joey lets him go, slaps him on the back hard enough to make him stagger, and heads into the kitchen.

“I need another beer,” he calls over his shoulder. “Want me to bring you something?”

“No, I’ll get one in a minute.”

The silence that follows Joey’s departure is thick and awkward. Well, it’s awkward for Chris, anyway. Lance doesn’t seem the least bit disconcerted, standing by the pool, all poised and cool and couldn’t-care-less. Chris represses an urge to tickle him just to see what it will take to crack that veneer. Because it has to be a veneer. Lance came out here mad as hell at him, at Justin and at JC - mad enough to yell at _JC_! - and even a dose of Joey magic isn’t likely to have doused that particular flame so quickly. He resists the urge, though, because in spite of the temptation he doesn’t actually have a death wish. And besides. He has a mission. He’s here to _fix things_.

“Uh. Hey.” Yeah, that was smooth. That old Kirkpatrick charm, always looking for an outlet.

Lance doesn’t move or answer, but he looks marginally less bored. A slight twitch of his right eyebrow. Chris takes it for encouragement.

“So. Um. Uh. Hungry?” At this point, he’s seriously considering chewing his own tongue off and giving it to Justin for the hummingbird pie. Lance’s expression shifts from impassive to incredulous and he shakes his head.

“You know what, Chris?” There’s something hard in his voice, almost a warning, but then he places his right hand in the centre of Chris’ chest and Chris huffs out a great sigh of relief because, contact, yeah. Lance is touching him and really, this is going so much better than he thought it would. He’s just about to lay his own hand on top of Lance’s when Lance says, “Just. Oh, to hell with it” and gives him a powerful shove. Chris is suddenly tumbling backwards, and his field of vision is a shifting blur of Lance’s angry face, and of house and tree tops and sky, and his arms wheel madly as he tries to steady himself, and then he’s at the bottom of the pool sucking in a noseful of chlorinated water.

He surfaces in an explosion of movement, spitting and choking, arms still pistoning, his nose shrieking in agony. Lance has disappeared, so Chris sucks back a mouthful of insults and rage and starts to haul himself out of the pool. He’s so pissed off that he ends up slipping back in and inhaling another rush of water, which makes him even angrier, although Joey and Justin and JC, who have moved outside, seem to appreciate the show. They’re standing by the pool, trying with no success at all not to laugh, and Chris considers grabbing all the ankles he can reach and hauling them in too.

When he’s on dry land again, dripping wet and still fuming, he looks toward the house. “Has he gone home?” He isn’t sure whether he’s relieved or disappointed when they all shake their heads “no” at him.

“He’s, I think he’s just getting another beer, Chris,” Joey says.

“Oh, good, cause he’s obviously not quite drunk and obnoxious enough already.”

“He’s not drunk,” Joey tells him. “He’s only had one beer so far. He’s just mad at you, dude.”

“God, yeah, what did you say to him?” Justin’s still laughing but he’s starting to look a little annoyed, too. “I thought you were coming out here to fix things, not piss him off even more and turn him all homicidal and shit.”

Chris glares at him. “I just asked him if he was hungry. I swear to god. That’s it. He’s, I don’t know, he’s got some kind of freaking personality disorder or something. I mean, what the fuck? How am I supposed to talk to him when he’s fucking deranged? And now I’m soaked and, Christ, I’m going to look like a tool in Justin’s shit, his pants are too fucking long and I’m going to have to roll them up so many times I’ll look like I’m wearing tutus on my ankles. And that’s if I can even do them up.” He jabs a finger into Justin’s flat abdomen resentfully. “Fucker.”

Justin just laughs at him again, like the totally crappy best friend he obviously is. “Well, hey, maybe you should just stay naked, man. Woo him with your sexy bod. Go ahead, take it off, baby.”

“That’s it!” Joey shouts. “Show Lance the fine Kirkpatrick booty! What sane man could resist?” He and Justin start chanting “Take it off! Take it off!”

“Um, um. Guys?” JC is flapping his hands, grimacing and tipping his head in the direction of the house, and they all turn guiltily to find Lance watching them from the kitchen doorway.

Chris glares at him and gives himself a shake, loosing a spray of water in an outward trajectory that, not entirely coincidentally, happens to encompass Joey, Justin and JC, who all scramble backwards to remove themselves from the line of fire. It feels pretty good, actually, the water flying off, wet shorts flapping around his legs and people tripping over themselves to get away from him. He totally gets why dogs do this. He gives himself another vigorous shake and tells Justin, “I’m going to go steal some of your clothes. Don’t worry, I won’t mess with your corsets, I know how you hate that.”

“Fuck you. Wait, let me get you a towel first, I don’t want you getting my carpets all wet.”

“Oh, carpets, schmarpets, you fucking girl. I’ll buy you new ones.”

He elbows Lance out of the way, not too gently, but then again, not nearly as roughly as he’d like. He doesn’t look at his face, but as he moves past and breathes in Lance’s warmth, the lingering tang of his aftershave and the muddled sweetness of the two billion and one products he uses on his hair, he can feel his anger starting to dissipate and by the time he reaches Justin’s bedroom Chris is comfortably aware of the hard on now occupying his sodden boxers.

He peels off all his clothes, leaving them in a heap in front of the closet just because he knows it will piss Justin off and it serves him right because if he’d just let Chris leave when he wanted to, there wouldn’t be any wet clothes to worry about. It’s cool in the bedroom, not enough to make him cold, just enough that the air skates across his wet skin like chilly fingers every time he moves, and there’s something decidedly erotic in the illusion. He considers lying down on Justin’s bed and beating off, because that would no doubt piss Justin off even more than the pile of wet clothes, and it would probably weird him out into the bargain, but well. It would weird Chris out, too, so he just smiles benevolently at his dick, whispers “later, dude” and starts pawing through Justin’s clothes.

Eventually he decides on an old pair of sweat pants, cut off below the knee, and an oversize orange t-shirt with a picture of Badtz Maru on the front. At least the shirt is long enough to cover any more potential enthusiasm from his dick if he happens to catch another whiff of Lance.

He examines himself critically in Justin’s full length mirror--one of four, for god’s sake, he thinks, and makes a mental note to say something unkind about Justin’s appearance these days before he gets too big headed--and smiles at his reflection in approval. “Who wouldn’t love you, you love god, you” he says as he high fives himself.

He knows he should head downstairs because he’s been up here long enough to change three times, but he’s not quite ready to step back into the fray. He needs to figure a few things out first. Like how he’s going to get out of the house without talking to Lance again, for example. “Dude, you are one sorry motherfucker,” he mutters to his reflection, “Stay away from me.”

Justin’s bed is huge, almost as big as his swimming pool, and it’s covered with a quilt that’s almost the exact shade of blue as the pool and about five hundred and twelve pillows. Chris launches himself at it, landing dead centre in a breathtaking belly flop that sends pillows flying in all directions. He lies on his back staring at the ceiling and then glances first to his left, then to his right. Miles of bed on either side. You could host a party on this bed, he thinks, you could host a fucking awards show on this bed. He wonders briefly how many people could comfortably sleep here and guesses that the five of them could probably make it work. If they, like, ever lost their shirts in the stock market and could only afford the one bed.

He stares at the ceiling again for a while and then sits up reluctantly. This shouldn’t be so difficult, it really shouldn’t, and he can’t figure out why it is. All he really needs to do is go downstairs, clap a hand over Lance’s snarky mouth, and tell him. Tell him.

Tell him what? That’s the sticking point right there, this thing that Chris doesn’t even have words for. And this is new, because Chris always has words, words are what he does. At any given moment on any given day in any different state of the union he has a volcano of words seething just below his surface waiting to erupt at the slightest encouragement. Sure, he has periods of silence, but these are deliberate, calculated silences, silences that he drapes around himself when the available words are too ugly or mean and he doesn’t want to smear them all over the people he cares about. Wordlessness is not in his domain, it’s an alien state, unfamiliar and unwelcoming and scary as hell.

He suspects that maybe, in fact, he does have words for this, that the words aren’t eluding him so much as he’s racing ahead of them, hiding around corners, hoping to escape them. This almost insight doesn’t really help, though. It doesn’t make him any more willing to stand still and let the words catch up.

The truth is, he’s never been as uncertain of anyone as he is of Lance. He thinks back to all the other people he’s put the moves on over the years, and tries to remember a time when anything felt as complicated as this, but nothing comes to mind. Well, there was that time back in college when he got drunk at somebody’s wedding and accidentally made plans to hook up with two different people after the party and when they showed up at his apartment within five minutes of one another sometime after three in the morning he discovered they were mother and son.

This is different though. This time it’s Lance, and really, there are only so many ways this can go. Either Lance says yes, and they get together, or Lance says no and they don’t.

If he says yes, then maybe they get together for a night or a week or ten years and everything works out and they live happily ever after in boyband heaven, la la la. And really, even though it’s what Chris is hoping for, he has to admit that the chances of it happening are about as likely as pushing your face into a blender and ending up with the nose job you’ve always wanted.

Or maybe he says yes and they get together and it sucks shit and they fall apart and everything is messy and tense and gut wrenchingly nasty. Lance might be able to manage bland and civilized break-ups, because that’s what you do when you date an endless series of accountants, lawyers, stock brokers and other hopelessly boring assholes, but Chris’ break-ups have tended to lean toward the more colourful, heart on sleeve, drink till you puke, make everyone else’s lives miserable for months on end variety. So, they break up in a spectacularly unpleasant way, and then the friendship falls apart, because that’s what friendships do when you throw sex at them and then take it away again. And then the band is all fucked up, because Chris and Lance aren’t talking to each other and Joey’s taking Lance’s side and Justin’s taking Chris’ side and JC’s having a fucking nervous breakdown because he really hates this kind of shit and then everyone hates everyone else and, presto, no band.

And finally there’s this possibility: Lance says no. Chris pulls one of the two thousand pillows over his face. If Lance says no, he’s going straight to drinking, puking and making everyone else’s life miserable, even though it won’t technically be a break-up. He’s been obsessing over this for weeks and if the only pay off he gets is rejection, he’s not going to be the only one to suffer, that’s for damned sure.

“Chris? Chris! Get your butt down here!” Justin’s voice floats up from the foot of the stairs. “If I have to come up there, I’m going to kick your ass!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chris mutters. But there’s really no more to be gained from staring at the ceiling or trying to suffocate himself with Justin’s pillows. He gets up and straightens the quilt, pushes the pillows more or less back into place and looks around for his shoes.

“Come _on_!” Justin’s starting to sound whiney as well as annoyed. “The food’s getting _cold_ , and we’re _hungry_ , Chris. Let’s eat all fucking ready.”

“Oh, keep your shirt on, you big baby,” Chris yells back, “I’m on my way.” He grabs the pile of wet clothes, shoves them under one of the pillows and heads downstairs.

When Chris walks into the kitchen, Justin’s alone and he can see the others outside at the patio table, already eating. Justin holds out a beer and hangs onto Chris’ hand when he reaches for it.

“You okay?” Justin asks. He studies Chris’ face for a moment and Chris must be doing a crappy job of mimicking Lance’s attitude of indifference because he corrects himself almost immediately. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s all good. Let’s go eat.”

Justin doesn’t let go of his arm. “That day you called? You were, it was about this, wasn’t it?” Chris doesn’t say anything, just waits for Justin to let him go. “I thought you were just fucking with me, man. I thought you were setting me up for one of your stupid jokes, you know? If I’d thought, well, you know, if I’d realized you were serious, I wouldn’t have been such a jerk.”

“Yeah, J, I know. Not your fault. I wasn’t really ready to talk about it, anyway.”

“It’s just. I want you to know that this thing with Lance? Your crush thing?” Chris rolls his eyes and makes a face to shut him up, but Justin pushes on. “Well, whatever it is, it’s, uh, I really hope it works out for you, okay? You guys, I think you guys would be really good together, you know?”

“Yeah, but what if we aren’t, J? What if it fucks up the band? It could, you know, it could really fuck things up.”

“You can’t do that, dude. You can’t make this about the band. It’s about you and Lance. The rest of it? We’ll figure it out, we’ll make it work because we always do. That’s what you said to me when I told you I wanted to do this solo thing, and I was all freaked out about how the other guys would react and if they’d be pissed at me or upset or whatever. And you told me to just chill, and not to think everything to death, and that we’d figure out how to deal with the crap when we had to. You told me to do what I have to do and trust that the rest of you would always want the best for me. Well, Lance is your solo thing, man. Just something you have to do.” He smirks. “Some _one_ you have to do. And however it all works out, we’ll be okay, the band will be okay.”

“Shit, I must be fucking desperate, listening to advice from you.” Chris hugs him to take the sting out of the words and pinches his ass. “Come on, you sappy freak, let’s go eat. My steak’s getting cold.”

“Hands off the booty, Kirkpatrick. Okay. Food. But, Chris? Just. Try not to be an asshole out there, okay?”

Chris just rolls his eyes again and takes a hefty swig of his beer before going outside. Joey and JC greet his re-appearance with a painfully unconvincing display of good cheer, beckoning him over to sit between them and pushing his food toward him. This places him directly across from Lance, who looks at him, but doesn’t say anything.

An awkward silence surrounds them, louder than the music Justin has playing in the background. Chris thinks about making a joke or telling a story to ease the tension, but just doesn’t have the energy. He concentrates on eating, instead, chewing each piece of (cold) meat methodically, thoroughly, like someone’s hidden a microchip in his steak and the world will end if he doesn’t find it.

Eventually, Joey asks JC a question about his album, but he has to repeat it twice and JC still says, “Um, what?” looking anxiously from Chris to Lance, as though he’s expecting to find the answer tattooed on one of their foreheads, or maybe waiting for them to break into a duet or spontaneously combust. But it eases the strain enough that when Justin starts telling them about some party he went to in England where an eighty year old duchess wouldn’t quit hitting on him, they stop gazing at their plates and start laughing and pretty soon they’re swapping crude stories about unlikely encounters and it all feels normal again.

Lance has been laughing with everyone else and making jokes, but he hasn’t contributed any stories of his own yet, and Justin says, “What about you, Lance? Weirdest come on you’ve ever had. Come on, spill.”

Lance furrows his brow and thinks for a minute. “I don’t know. I can’t really think of anything. Maybe I just appeal to normal people.”

Justin snorts. “Oh, yeah. Like Chris is normal.” Everything goes quiet again and Chris is torn between yelling at Justin and stabbing him with his fork. They all stare at their plates again for a few minutes, and pick uncomfortably at their food until finally Lance throws a napkin at Chris to get his attention and says quietly, “We need to talk.”

“Right. Yeah, sure. Want me to go stand by the pool and you can try to drown me again?”

Lance pushes his chair back and stands up. “Inside. Now.” He doesn’t wait for Chris to follow, just walks into the house without another word.

“Um, I think you’d better go, Chris.” JC gives him a little push and motions toward the house.

“Okay, men, I’m going in. Synchronize your watches and if I’m not out in twenty minutes, send for reinforcements.” He plants a sloppy kiss on Justin’s mouth and pats his cheek. “Goodbye, beautiful. If anything happens to me in there, I want you to forget about me and find yourself another god-like hunk to warm your sheets.” He squares his shoulders and follows Lance into the house.

 

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Lance is waiting for him in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, twisting the cap off a fresh beer.

“I’m not so sure I want to be around you when you’re armed,” Chris says, nodding toward the bottle in Lance’s hand.

Lance laughs and then smiles, a smile of genuine apology. “I’m sorry about the pool thing. That was pretty immature. And not very helpful.”

“Yeah, no shit. I could have drowned.”

“You know how to swim.”

“I could have hit my head. And then drowned.”

“You didn’t, though.”

“No. But I’m just saying. I could have.”

“Mm. I kind of wish you had, right now.” Chris smiles. He really likes Lance, apart from really _liking_ him. Lance waves the bottle and says, “Look. I already apologized, but I’ll apologize again if it’ll make you shut up about it.”

Chris pretends to think about it. “Yeah. Okay. That might do it.”

He nods encouragingly at Lance who glares at him but says, “I’m sorry I pushed you into the pool.” He even manages to sound sincere.

“Consider the subject closed,” Chris says magnanimously.

They watch each other in silence for a couple of minutes, trying to figure out how to begin. At least that’s what Chris is doing; he’s not sure about Lance. Maybe Lance is waiting for Chris to figure out how to begin. It could be a long wait.

Eventually, Lance sighs and says, “Look, Chris,” and Chris would do pretty much anything to distract him from whatever is about to follow because he’s quite certain it’s not anything he wants to hear. As it turns out, he doesn’t have to do anything because Lance interrupts himself with a muttered, “Shit.” His gaze is fixed on a point somewhere over Chris’ left shoulder and when Chris turns to see what’s stolen his attention, he sees Joey, JC and Justin still sitting on the patio, facing the kitchen window and staring intently at the scene unfolding in front of them. Chris gives them a wave and a little bow, and JC has the grace to look away, but Joey and Justin just grin at him and wave back.

He turns back to Lance who, for the first time, looks uncomfortable, like he might not have all the answers he’ll ever need tucked into the back pocket of his neatly ironed shorts. He’s picking at the label on his beer bottle, setting the little scraps of damp paper carefully on the counter instead of letting them fall to the floor.

Chris reaches over and rests his hand over Lance’s on the bottle and he’s surprised to find that Lance is shaking. Okay, Lance is even more freaked out than he is. This makes him feel better, for some reason that probably says something unpleasant about his character. “Why don’t we go upstairs? To talk,” he adds quickly. “Without an audience?”

“Um,” Lance looks from Chris to the kitchen window to the hallway and back to Chris. He’s gripping the beer bottle so tightly that Chris is worried that it might shatter and it’s a pretty terrible thing that the thought he hangs on to is that if the bottle does shatter, there’s probably going to be blood on those brown hands and on that white, white t-shirt, and maybe Lance will let Chris strip him down and wash him. He’s a very bad person, going to hell for sure.

“Come on.”

He tugs on Lance’s arm, and Lance doesn’t resist when Chris turns him around and urges him toward the hall and the staircase.

Chris admires the view as he follows him up. Lance has always had a great ass, but it’s in particularly fine form these days, what with all his star boy training. Even though he’s wearing baggy shorts, the cotton fabric pulls snug with each upward step, highlighting the fluid glide of muscle under skin, and Chris’ fingers itch to trace that delectable curve of butt and thigh.

He’s thinking about how he’s always preferred baggy shorts, even on women, because there’s just something so tantalising about the promise of accessibility, the sure knowledge that a handful of skin is just one slide of the palm up and under that hem, and then suddenly Lance has stopped moving and he hasn’t. There’s an instant when he has an unexpected yet delightful faceful of Lance’s ass, which he manfully refrains from biting, and then he steps back quickly, waving his hands in vague apology, not trusting himself to speak because there are at least twenty five horrible jokes winging around his brain begging to be uttered. Lance doesn’t seem to have noticed, though. He just looks over his shoulder at Chris, eyes unreadable, lips slightly parted to say something that he swallows back quickly like a mouthful of hot coffee. After a moment, Lance gives himself a little shake and says, “come on” as though Chris has been dragging his heels.

In Justin’s bedroom, Lance walks over to the window and stands looking out, his back to Chris. Chris thinks about turning on the light, but he’s not sure if more light is going to help anything, and anyway, Lance looks pretty nice framed by the setting sun. Not sure what to do, Chris sits on the bed and waits.

He waits for maybe two minutes and then he can’t stand it any more.

“So, um. I was going to tell you myself. I mean, the other night, I was going to tell you.” Chris pauses, but Lance doesn’t move, doesn’t react, maybe hasn’t even heard. “But. I don’t know. When I went to. Well, I just kind of --“

Lance turns, finally, face tight and tense, his hands jammed into his pockets, held there with shaking arms. He looks like someone’s wound him up and forgotten to push the “on” button. It’s unnerving because Chris still can’t figure out what’s behind the silence, although he has a pretty good guess. For all his cool bitchiness, Lance is a really decent guy. Unlike Chris, who tends to lash out randomly when the stress reaches critical mass, Lance’s moments of nastiness tend to be a specific reaction to whoever has gotten under his skin. Chris knows this quite well, having worked very hard on many occasions to become the stimulus to provoke that reaction. Lance is fun that way.

So, now he figures what’s tying Lance up in knots is the knowledge that what he’s about to say to Chris is going to hurt, that there’s no way to soften it, no way either of them is getting out of this room without a little emotional bloodshed.

“Look, Lance. I know that JC told you that I, um. And it’s true, I do, but it doesn’t have to mean. I mean, it’s probably just a phase, or whatever, and I don’t want, I don’t expect you--.“

Lance’s eyes seem to get wider with every word that falls out of Chris’ mouth, and Chris stutters to a stop, sensing that he’s got things wrong, yet again. And then Lance is pulling his hands out of his pockets and he’s holding them out in front of him like he’s warding off evil, or possibly directing traffic, and he’s saying, “Stop. Stop. Chris, please stop.”

And then he isn’t across the room anymore, he’s right in front of Chris and he’s saying, “Shut up, shut up. Please, just shut up,” and then he’s straddling Chris, his knees pressing into the mattress on either side of Chris’ thighs and Chris has a sudden lapful, a heavy hot lapful of . . . of _Lance_ , oh fucking jesus. Lance’s hands move up to hold Chris’ head, one palm open against the base of his skull, the other cradling the side of his face, and Lance’s face is buried against Chris’ neck, pressed against his collar bone and he can feel Lance’s breath, hot and damp, scalding his skin. And Lance is still muttering, “shut up, shut up,” punctuating each “shut up” with a sharp little bite.

Chris says, “Wait, what--?”

“Shut up.” _Bite_.

“Lance, wait, I don’t--” “Shut _up_.” _Bite_.

“Yeah, okay, but we need to talk”

   
“Shut” 

  
_bite_   


“the fuck” 

  
_bite_   


“up.”

If this is supposed to discourage him from talking, it’s a pretty poor strategy. Chris’ dick is getting harder with each scrape of Lance’s teeth and he’s quite content to babble until dawn if this is the payoff. In fact, maybe he’ll never stop talking, he’ll just rattle on under the sweet pressure of Lance’s mouth until his heart stops. With time out for bathroom breaks. And, just possibly, fucking breaks, if this is leading where it seems to be leading.

But, in any case, they have to talk. They have to, because Chris doesn’t know what this means, and before they take it any further, he has to know what it means to Lance, whether it’s a pity fuck or a convenience fuck, a one time fuck or the first in a series of one time fucks. Or something more. He needs to know, because right now he feels like he’s still sucking in water at the bottom of Justin’s pool.

“Lance, I--” “Shut up.” _Bite_.

“No, wait, for real, Lance, I--” “Shut up, shut up, shut up.” _Bite_.

“No-stop-I-have-to-talk-because-I-don’t-know-what-you-want-and-I’m-going-to-fuck-this-up-for-sure-if-you-don’t-talk-to-me-and-tell-me-what-to-do.”

Lance pulls back a little, which is good because maybe he’s going to explain things, give a few navigation tips on how to read this particular map, but it’s also bad because Chris’ neck is now startlingly empty of Lance’s lips and it’s a very cold and lonely sensation, like his neck has been set adrift in the Bering Straits in mid-winter.

But Lance doesn’t speak. He just holds Chris’ gaze and runs one hand slowly and deliberately down the side of Chris’ face, across the very spot on his neck that’s still burning from Lance’s mouth, down his chest, over his stomach, bringing it to rest over Chris’ crotch. For the first time in his life, Chris thinks he might faint. Every cell in his body kicks into high alert and it feels like every neuron is firing simultaneously, like every inch of his skin is straining toward that touch.

Lance just holds his hand over Chris’ dick, a small enigmatic smile curving his lips, and Chris is painfully short of breath. He knows there’s something he wanted to say, something that _needed_ to be said, but all he can manage is “Oh, man, oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Lance smiles wickedly at him. “Now you’re talking.” He leans back in until his mouth touches Chris’, and then his tongue is painting an invitation across Chris’s lips, and he’s squeezing Chris’ dick and licking his mouth, squeezing and licking, licking and squeezing, and who the fuck ever said this boy didn’t have rhythm.

For a minute, Chris does nothing, just sits and basks in the sensation of Lance on his lap and Lance on his mouth and, oh yeah, Lance doing clever things to him through a thin sheath of fabric, and then it occurs to him that, hey, _Lance_ is in his _lap_ , and maybe Chris better get with the fucking program before second thoughts start kicking in. At the very least he can get a good grope in before Lance changes his mind.

He grabs hold of the back of Lance’s head and yanks him in closer, pushing the kiss into something deeper, wetter, dirtier. Lance tastes like beer and maybe a bit like steak sauce, but mostly like something Chris has been wanting forever. He glides his other hand up inside Lance’s baggy shorts, and, oh, skin, hot golden Lance skin silky against his palm, and he digs his fingers in, _hard_ , he can’t help it, it just feels so damned good to have his hands on this body. Lance makes a sound, maybe a moan of pleasure or maybe he’s pissed off, but it’s hard to tell because his mouth is full of Chris’ tongue. He doesn’t punch Chris in the head or anything, though, so apparently he’s not too upset. Just in case, Chris loosens his grip and runs his fingers gently, soothingly over the thigh, and can feel the muscles flexing involuntarily against his touch.

He tries to stuff his hand even further into Lance’s marvellous, capacious, accommodating shorts, reaching for the swell of ass cheek that he’s been fantasizing about for days now, but he gets stuck about two inches shy of his goal. What with Lance wiggling frantically into every movement of Chris’ hand, somehow his fingers have become twisted into the fabric and he can’t seem to yank them loose. Christ, these shorts, they’re fucking Venus flytraps, weird freaky man-eating shorts that just flap around prettily until some unsuspecting hand reaches up inside for booty and then _snap_! If Lance would just stay still for a second, maybe Chris could work himself loose, but Lance can’t seem to stop moving, it’s like he’s as desperate to get his ass on Chris’ hand as Chris is, and that thought’s enough to make Chris whimper like a baby. There’s not much he can do to oblige, though, with his hand immobilized, so finally he drags his mouth reluctantly away from Lance’s.

“Um, just, wait, wait. I just . . .” Chris trails off, distracted by the flush on Lance’s cheeks and the light sheen of sweat along his jaw and the slightly disappointed, hungry expression on his face.

“ _What_? Christ almighty, Kirkpatrick, I haven’t slept with _girls_ who talk this much!”

Okay, maybe not so much hungry as annoyed.

“That could be because you don’t, in fact, sleep with girls.”

“I do too sleep with girls.”

“A drunken mistake six years ago doesn’t count. You totally thought that chick was a guy when you picked her up.”

“Whatever. Are we going to do this or are you going dick around all night? And, okay, poor choice of words, but if you make a stupid joke I swear to god, I’m leaving you with the worst case of blue balls you’re ever likely to experience. I mean it, Chris.” He gives a warning squeeze to Chris’ dick, which is already so hard it’s pretty amazing it hasn’t tattooed a hole in Justin’s shorts.

“No, no. We are, we’re totally gonna do it, man. It’s just. My hand. I need--” Chris gives another mighty tug and hears a loud ripping sound. “Oops.”

“What are you _doing_?” Lance looks down at Chris’ hand, protruding through the rather large hole he’s just torn in Lance’s shorts.

“It’s just the seam. No big deal. I’ll make JC sew them up for you.”

Before he even finishes the sentence, Lance is moving, up and off his lap, away from Chris. At first Chris thinks he’s angry, but no, Lance is laughing, which is maybe okay, but then again, he’s moving away and that can’t be good. Chris leaps up after him, grabs him by the waistband and hauls him backwards and onto the bed, climbing on top of him to make sure he stays put.

“Where do you think you’re going, Bass?”

“I was just going to take these off.” Lance reaches down to undo the top button on his shorts, and Chris pushes his hands away.

“Let me.”

“Sure you can manage? Just, you seemed to be having a few problems earlier. I’d hate for you to get stuck again. In my shorts.” He starts giggling helplessly, and Chris feels it like a pinch to the heart. He hasn’t seen Lance so relaxed in, well, he can’t remember how long it’s been. Lance looks young and happy, like he’s never contemplated having his cell phone surgically attached to his ear and really, who the hell knew that you only had to fool around in his shorts for a while to make the guy loosen up a bit.

As Chris runs his fingers over Lance’s ribs and under his armpits, the giggles get louder until Lance is squirming frantically underneath him. Chris knows every ticklish spot on this body, on all the guys’ bodies, for that matter. He’s been gathering the information for the past few years, although it’s been a while since he’s been allowed to put that knowledge into practice with Lance. Sometime during the last couple of years Lance decided he’d had enough of Chris’ tickling and roughhousing, and declared his body off limits, an edict that Chris has tried, occasionally and not terribly successfully, to respect. Clearly it was a mistake to even consider it, Chris thinks as he watches Lance smacking at his hands and trying to twist out of his grasp.

“Stop, stop, please, Chris, no more, no more. Uncle, _uncle_!”

Lance is laughing so hard he’s starting to cry, and Chris leans down to lick the trail of tears from his cheek. A long, slow swipe and his mouth is tingling from the salt taste of Lance on his tongue. He can feel Lance’s body go still, can hear his laughter stutter into short, choppy gasps and then to silence. Sensing an undercurrent of uncertainty, Chris leans back to look and damned if the silly bastard isn’t still trying to play it cool. Lance is staring back at him, eyes wide and intent, and there’s a look of fierce concentration on his face as he visibly tries to slow his breathing and get himself back under control.

Chris smiles at him and shakes his head. “You’re such an idiot, Bass.”

He reaches under Lance’s t-shirt, letting his hands linger over the twitching stomach muscles, his touch light, teasing. Lance’s eyes squeeze shut and he whispers, “oh, uh” so quietly that Chris might have missed it if he hadn’t seen his lips move. When Chris strokes more firmly and slides one hand up higher to pinch a nipple, Lance makes an odd little choked sound and grabs tight fistfuls of Justin’s quilt. When Chris leans down and pushes his tongue into the heat of Lance’s mouth, Lance moans, deep and low, and it sounds like porn but much, much sexier. Then Lance’s hips are arching up and his hands are dragging at Chris, yanking him closer, tugging urgently but ineffectually at his clothes, and he’s squirming madly, like the bed beneath him is on fire and he’s trying to burrow into Chris for safekeeping.

It occurs to Chris that they’re both going to come in their pants--or in his case, in Justin’s pants--if they don’t get rid of them pretty quickly. Maybe that was okay in high school (although really it wasn’t, just messy and sticky and kind of gross), but he knows how fussy Lance is about his clothes and getting them all wet and mucky probably isn’t going to enhance Chris’ chances for a second go at him.

He hauls himself off Lance, who puts up an energetic struggle trying to yank him back into place and makes cranky, petulant noises until Chris starts skinning out of his sweats and t-shirt. “Mm,” he mumbles as he watches Chris strip, expression an endearing mix of lust and uncharacteristic shyness. He looks delicious, all sweaty and rumpled and eager, possibly the hottest thing Chris has ever seen in his life.

Chris wants to fuck him, get him on his hands and knees and fuck him till he screams, but he doesn’t think either one of them can last that long and he can’t imagine putting everything on hold while they fart around trying to find Justin’s stash of condoms and lube, which might be in the bedside table but might just as likely be in the bathroom. There’s no way on God’s green earth that Chris’ legs are going to carry him that far.

“Wait, just wait a sec,” he says as Lance reaches for him again. He undoes Lance’s shorts slowly, taking care not to snag anything important in the zipper’s teeth, but Lance doesn’t let him get the shorts any lower than his thighs before he’s bucking upwards again, grabbing Chris by the hips, dragging him down, muttering “Dammit, oh, oh, shit, fuck, come _here_!”

And then they’re grinding against one another, fast and furious, just heat and skin and the sweet, low hum of sound that slips from Lance’s mouth into his and back again. There’s a brief moment when it feels so good, so perfect, that Chris thinks he could do this all night long, and then Lance is gasping and shuddering and coming apart against him, and it’s too much, just enough, it’s the fucking hallelujah chorus. He slams his dick one last time into the welcoming hollow of Lance’s hip and somehow remembers to roll himself off of Lance before he collapses.

It hits him just as he’s drifting contentedly into sleep. They should have talked. Chris still has no idea what this means, whether it’s a one-shot deal or the whole farm. He props himself up on one elbow and looks down at Lance who’s lying on his back, eyes closed, a small smile on his lips. His shorts are still tangled around his ankles and his t-shirt is hiked up to his armpits, and he’s so fucking beautiful Chris can hardly breathe.

He runs his thumb gently over Lance’s lower lip and says, “So, uh, was that …? Are we, um …? Does this mean …?”

Lance doesn’t even open his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay. Good, then.” He pokes Lance in the stomach. “But, well. What exactly?”

“You’re my boyfriend.”

“For real? I mean, cool. Cool. It’s because I’m so great in the sack, right?”

“Yeah, because I’m such a slut for dry humping. Maybe next time we can do it in the back seat of your car.”

“Bitch. And I don’t think it qualifies as dry humping if your pants are off. Down. Whatever.”

Lance’s smile widens and he opens his eyes and winks at Chris.

“So. Lance? How long? I mean, when did you realize that you were, like, hot for me?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not so much, no.”

“You’re serious? You are, you’re serious! You crazy bastard, guys don’t do this shit! Guys fuck and shut up and go to sleep. At least when they sleep with other guys.”

“Fuck off. That’s old millennium gender stereotyping, dude. We talk now. Didn’t you get the memo?” He runs his hand slowly up and down Lance’s body, pleased at the shiver his touch elicits. “Tell me.”

“I’ve liked you for years. Years. Forever. You know that.”

“And how exactly would I know that? I’m supposed to be able to read your mind? And you say _I_ act like a girl.”

“I don’t expect you to read my mind.”

“You expect me to be able to figure out that you’ve been pining for me since forever. So, what, you’ve been sending out all these subtle Bass signals and I’m supposed to snatch them out of the ether? I don’t _do_ subtle, man. You should know that by now.”

Lance stares at him for a couple of minutes in silence. He’s back to being unreadable again and Chris is getting ready to start tickling him again when he says, “I asked you if you wanted to fuck. That’s not exactly what I’d call subtle.”

“What? You did not! You never!”

“I did. In Germany.” He closes his eyes again and Chris pinches him until he opens them. “Stop that! I asked you in Germany. Just before we came back to the States.”

“Um, I think I’d remember that, Lance. Maybe you asked Joey?”

“I can’t believe you don’t remember. Fuck. Now you have _me_ acting like a girl. Oh, for god’s sake. It was our last night. We all went to that bar you liked? The one with all the black and pink vinyl and the waiters and waitresses who looked like vampires in patent leather lederhosen? And you were pissed off because we were flying home the next day and you couldn’t score and you said you’d never felt hornier in all your born days?”

That stirs a vague flutter of memory, and yes, actually, yes, he does remember the night and he remembers all these chicks hitting on Joey and he remembers flirting with some dude in the washroom only to have the guy leave with some woman who looked old enough to be his grandmother.

“And the others left, but I stayed with you and you drank a fair bit but you weren’t, like, totally smashed or anything. And in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, you were still going on about having screwed up your last chance to get laid in Germany and I said, ‘well, you can fuck me if you like,’ and you, as I recall, said ‘I may be desperate, Bass, but I’m not out of my god damned mind.’ I pretty much took that as a no.”

“Oh.” Shit. Yeah, he remembers that part, too, the invitation hitting him in the face like a shovel, the feeling that all the air had been sucked out of his lungs, that his heart was about to stop beating in his chest. And he remembers attributing his reaction to being appalled with himself for allowing Lance to get so drunk he didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. “I’d forgotten that. Mostly. I mean, it’s not something I took seriously. I was pretty drunk, man. And you were wasted. Or at least I thought you were. I figured you were just, you know, eighteen and horny and trying to be agreeable. Or something. I don’t think I’ve thought about it since.” And that’s true, anyway.

“Mmm.”

“So, like, if you meant it, why didn’t you try again? If you were so in _love_ with me and all?”

“Your ‘no’ seemed pretty definitive.”

“Yeah, but. Well, JC says he’s known for years that I liked you. You didn’t pick up on that?”

“I wondered. Sometimes you just. Watch me. And you look a bit, I don’t know. Intense, maybe? But whenever I flirt back you back right off or start making rude jokes at my expense or head butt me, so. I just kind of figured that I was mistaking psychosis for interest. Do we really need to talk about this? Because I’ve always felt that one of the great perks about being gay is that I don’t actually have to talk about this.”

“Don’t you think we should? Shouldn’t we, like, establish some ground rules or something?”

Lance sighs and rolls his eyes. “What is it with you and rules? Jeez. Oh, fuck, don’t pout. Fine, you want rules, we’ll have some rules. Rule one, you’re my boyfriend. Rule two, we’ll fuck as often as humanly possible, because I’ve got several hundred thousand hours of sexual tension to burn off and I’m holding you accountable for every single one of them. Rule three, we stop talking about this shit right now or I start withholding sex. And since that would be in direct violation of rule two, we stop fucking talking about it. Does that about cover it?”

“I think I can live with those rules.”

He pulls Lance close and then closer still until their limbs are tangled satisfactorily and the demarcation lines between their two bodies have almost disappeared. Lance is asleep already, his head tucked between Chris’ chin and chest, the sound of his slow, steady breathing covering them both like a blanket.

There’s a noise on the stairs, followed by a quiet knock on the door which Chris ignores. When the door eases open, Chris snaps his eyes closed, faking a noisy snore to tamp down the hysteria that tries to escape at Justin’s howl of outrage.

“You! Fuck! Chris, you fucker! On my bed! You fucking did it on my bed!”

A muffled struggle ensues punctuated by Joey’s giggling and JC murmuring soothingly to Justin, and he’s falling asleep for real as he hears the door click softly closed again.  


  
The End

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was my very first story in any fandom, and I'm still rather fond of it, in spite of its flaws. I look at it like the first pancake of a batch: a bit misshapen, overdone around the edges, underdone in the centre, but not altogether unpleasing for all that.


End file.
